A Madrid man who received 30 fines in 15 days for entering the city’s low emission zone without the proper tag in his car has had the fines annulled in a judicial ruling that could set a precedent for similar cases, El Debate reports.
Driver defense associations are already working on behalf of hundreds of drivers who have incurred multiple fines in the space of a few days—or even a single day—while making necessary trips into the low emission zones However, the case of Sergio, the father in the case, is striking, as he incurred the fines while taking his child to the hospital daily, for a series of treatments. In cases such as this, drivers can violate the fine print of the rules without even realizing it.
Sergio didn’t understand why he was getting fined and found the information confusing. He paid up to three fines of 200 euros, with a discount of 100 euros for prompt payment, before opening legal proceedings against the town hall of Madrid. Nevertheless, it took years for him to get his case resolved. A judge ruled that one fine would have been sufficient enough and that all of the violations should have been combined and processed as one infraction, resulting in one single fine.
According to El Debate, the Pyramid Consulting law firm has won some 96 rulings and had a success rate of 70% defending its clients using this legal argument.
El Debate further reports that, like Sergio, many drivers have had to turn to legal proceedings against the city because their administrative requests for the fines to be reviewed fall on deaf ears. Courts have already criticized the city council for treating the administrative procedure as a “dialogue of the deaf” as the city responds to every request for review with the same standard response—essentially leaving the citizen defenseless.
In 2023 alone, the Madrid City Council imposed more than 720,000 fines for violation of low emission zone rules, bringing in approximately €145 million.
