Michigan case fighting parking tickets now a class action: Are you are eligible to join?

A Michigan parking ticket case by two enterprising lawyers that made national headlines as it worked its way through the legal system and set precedent now is moving forward as a class-action lawsuit.

In short, if the plaintiffs win, potentially thousands of people could be compensated.

The attorneys — Philip Ellison and Matthew Gronda of the Outside Legal Counsel firm in Hemlock — have argued that marking tires with a piece of chalk to determine a vehicle has gone over its time limit in a parking space is unconstitutional.

Messages also were left by the Free Press with Saginaw officials seeking comment.

The case, which is against the city of Saginaw, was dismissed twice — and then overturned twice by an appeals court.

This time U.S. District Judge Thomas Ludington is allowing the city to argue that tire chalking is a legal way to enforce parking limits, although he said the city’s arguments after two losses don’t seem "immediately compelling."

The plaintiffs' attorneys, who began building their case in 2016, contend the chalk marking practice violates the Fourth Amendment’s restriction on unreasonable searches and seizures.

The firm wasted no time this week and set up a website, saginawchalk.com, to let motorists know that they "may be entitled to reimbursement of certain parking tickets paid by you due to the alleged use of an unconstitutional tire chalking process."

The "certain parking tickets" go back as far as April 5, 2014. To check to see if you might be eligible to join the class action, you can type in your license plate number and the website will check it against an electronic database, and enter your name to join the suit.

Saginaw argued marking a tire was a "minimal intrusion" when weighed against the city’s interest in managing parking. Ludington agreed and dismissed the case. But the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed his decision.

Decisions by the 6th Circuit set legal precedent in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee. But the case has also been cited by lawyers suing Los Angeles and San Diego over a similar practice in those California cities.

Judge Richard Griffin — in a 3-0 opinion — said tire chalking, which was used in cases resulting in an estimated 4,800 tickets, was "not necessary to meet the ordinary needs of law enforcement, let alone the extraordinary."

The tickets were for $15 to $30, depending on when they were paid.

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According to various news media accounts, Gronda was in his car outside the county courthouse six years ago talking to Ellison on the phone when a parking enforcement officer clicked over Gronda's tire with chalk.

He mentioned to Ellison it was a search.

From that, the two began investigating whether the tire mark was a legal search.

Perhaps it wasn't.

A 2012 Supreme Court decision, United States v. Jones, had unanimously ruled police violated the Constitution by using a Global Positioning System tracking device on a suspect’s car and monitored it.

Their legal curiosity became a lawsuit when they found Alison Taylor, or rather, Taylor found Ellison on Facebook.

Taylor, who was frustrated, commented on one of Ellison's posts about her parking ticket woes: She had gotten 14 parking tickets in three years. She complained no one should be touching her car and that a chalk mark was an unreliable way to determine a ticket.

Ellison and Gronda went to court.

And in 2019, when the appeals court ruled that tire chalking is unconstitutional, Taylor became the center of national media attention, as outlets — including USA Today, the New York Times, the Washington Post, National Public Radio and network TV news — explained how the Constitution protected her from parking tickets.

Contact Frank Witsil: 313-222-5022 or fwitsil@freepress.com. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Saginaw parking ticket case now a class-action lawsuit: What to know