This isn't that "Fun" but I could use some help...

[sketchygirl]

This is a rough draft of a letter I am writing to my car insurance company. All the details are in it, and it is an incredibly stupid story. Sorry for the length, but I'm just really at a loss here.

In September of 2005 I was involved in an incident in the parking lot (Shell station). It was around dusk, in an area that is high in crime. When leaving the gas station I pulled backwards, felt a slight bump, and realized I had backed up into the left front bumper of a car parked behind me.

Within seconds, a large, shirtless, tattooed man with a shaved head jumped from the vehicle. I identified some of the tattoos as skinhead in nature. I could not hear what he was saying, but he was visibly upset, more upset than one should be in a situation like that. Scared, I (foolishly) left the scene.

When I felt safe I inspected my back passenger side bumper where the impact took place. There was no visible damage of any kind.

Months later in early October, my boyfriend was driving my car in an area we were unfamiliar with. We went the wrong way down a one-way alley and, almost immediately, we were pulled over. The officers informed me that the vehicle we were driving had a warrant out for it. They said it had been involved in a "hit and run" accident.

They proceeded to have the vehicle towed away and informed me that I needed to go downtown to be booked for the crime.

After having prints taken and paying bail, I was able to get my car out of impound. At this point I checked with Farmers Insurance of Springfield, my insurance company at the time, to see if any claims had been made. The man who I "hit" had not made a single claim on his vehicle. He had, however, filed a needless report to the St. Louis police department.

Feeling that I had a solid case, I hired a lawyer, Mr. Dale Zepp to represent me in court. He agreed that "leaving the scene of an accident" was very harsh for what actually occurred.

I put all of my faith in Mr. Zepp and took him on his word that he could get the mess sorted out. Finally, in February, 2006 he was finally able to tell me that my case was closed for good. He told me that he had gotten the charge reduced to "illegal backing". I even got some money back from the St. Louis circuit court, from what I originally had paid in bail. I assumed that the whole thing was behind me.

Never did any of this show up on our insurance in Springfield, so imagine my surprise when I applied for a new insurance policy in MO to find out that Mr. Zepp had not, in fact, reduced any charges or even APPEARED IN COURT for me.

After further investigation, I have found out that Mr. Zepp was disbarred in September of 2006. He was also sentenced in July of 2006 to 18 months in prison for mail fraud. I realize this is not about Dale Zepp, and about my own traffic ticket. However, in lieu of the circumstances I feel I should be granted some leniency. I was never given a fair opportunity to plead my case, because Mr. Zepp told me I did not have to appear in court. Had I gone, I am 100% certain that no judge would have charged me with a "hit-and-run." I am unable to provide you with any solid proof other than:

The other person involved in the incident filed no insurance claims, thus there was no increase in my insurance rate.

My lawyer was deemed unfit to practice law in the state of MO and I have a pending request with the Missouri Bar Association Client Compensation Fund.

This case is also currently being submitted to the Missouri State Disciplinary Council to be put on Mr. Zepp's record in case he ever files for reinstatement.

I hope you will consider reevaluating my "high risk" driving status. I am not a high risk driver at all. I simply made an error where the only person affected was myself. Now, it appears, I am paying for it still.

[Niki]

This reads nice, feels true, looks good. Sorry that that happened to you. I think it will work. Good luck.

[kellyrued]

I'm not sure about laws where you are but where I live a hit and run is just that-- leaving the scene of an auto collision without exchanging insurance and contact information with the owner of the vehicle you collided with. Even if nobody is in the car (a parked car), you are supposed to leave a note on the vehicle with your info.

I can understand your being frightened by an big angry guy and not wanting to get out of your car and risk bodily harm, but there was no reason for you to drive off without rolling down your window and trying to talk to the man. If you felt threatened, you could have written your info down and slipped it out a crack in the window to him or driven straight to the police station/called the cops. The cops would have understood if you waited inside your vehicle until they arrived to mediate between yourself and the angry dude. But you really just judged this guy for being upset and tattooed/big (in a high crime part of town) and then ended up breaking the law yourself because you were so worried he was going to do something inappropriate and illegal. Kind of ironic, really.

The whole deal with your lawyer really does convolute your situation though and perhaps you could seek some kind of appeal process citing the bad advice and poor representation you got from your lawyer. As it stands I think the insurance company would be doing something really unfair to treat your hit-and-run differently than any other (believe me that everyone has some perfectly-reasonable-sounding explanation for leaving an accident too, usually that they didn't think it was a big deal or didn't see any damage) but it seems you might have a right to a new trial because the first one was totally botched by your legal counsel.

The bottom line with criminal convictions is that almost nobody feels that they *deserve* the consequence. There is always some reason and back story that justifies why people do the things they do. I think that's why the court tends to look at what people did, the result of their actions, rather than what they were intending to do cuz otherwise we could hardly hold anyone accountable for breaking laws (people always have a lot of outside circumstances that impact why they break laws). I can appreciate your perspective on this (and agree with you that the court might have seen this your way as well) but I also can appreciate how your actions looked to the guy you backed into.

I think that if the other dude took the time to file a police report, it wasn't trivial to him (regardless of the damage or lack thereof to his car, for a lot of people it's just the principal of taking responsibility). And if you drove off without even talking to the guy (assuming he wasn't shaking a fist or brandishing a weapon at you) there is a *really good chance* he thought you were a total d-bag for backing into him and then tearing off.

Also, I hope you won't judge people too harshly for gang related tattoos cuz you never know if those allegiances are relevant anymore. Tattoos are expensive to remove/cover. And even if the guy was a raving skinhead, he still has the legal right to your contact/insurance info if you hit his car. As a woman I know that I would have been intimidated too but I would have tried to remain in my car while talking to him so I could pull off it got out of control.

[sketchygirl]

You really are right, kelly. This WAS probably the dumbest thing i've done in the past 5 years and your response sounds very similar to all of the cops I spoke with. Most of them were like, "it's ok to be scared, but there's a police station right down the street, you would have been fine if you just drove down there and reported it."

Another major factor in my judging of the guy was my past experiences with skinheads and how completely scary they can be (I saw a guy get his jaw dislocated at a party once by a skin w/steel toed boots). I just let those preconceived ideas cloud my judgement. I also rationalized it out at the time thinking "oh, he's probably a criminal, he won't even call the cops!"

I feel like the universe is totally getting back at me on this one. Hopefully I can get the case reopened and can try again. (I'm really not a hit-and-run kind of person! I'd hate to have that on my record forever!)

**Oh and I should mention that Missouri has a really strange system when it comes to traffic tickets. It's called "getting a ticket fixed" - they are on a point system, and when you get a ticket, you hire a lawyer and the lawyer gets the ticket "reduced" to a different, smaller fine. For example, you get a speeding ticket, you pay a lawyer, they go to court for you and you end up with a ticket for littering. It's completely shady.**