Dan's Papers - July 11, 2008

It was only $488.37, but for me, it was the sweetest check I have ever cashed. Written by the Hartford Insurance Company, it was their check #0100360192, and it was made out to me because of what I had to endure at the hands of the East Hampton Village Police, because of a 17-day clerical error Hartford made in 2006 with my auto insurance.

There was also a letter of apology, written by the NYC Regional Manager of that firm, Robert G. Hughes. Here is what it read.

Dear Mr. Rattiner,

Enclosed please find a draft for the amount of $488.37. This sum is based on the direct out-of-pocket expenses you incurred as a result of the incident of March 29, 2008. As you know, due to an unfortunate administrative processing error on the part of Hartford Financial Services, you incurred fines which may have been preventable. Please accept this payment as a gesture of goodwill on our behalf.

I apologize, on behalf of The Hartford. Our customers are important to us, and we hope you will choose to renew your insurance with The Hartford.

Sincerely, Robert Hughes

The events of March 29 referred to in the letter were as follows. My fiancée and I had parked our car legally on Montauk Highway in front of Citarella in East Hampton in order to go shopping there. It was 11 a.m. The car was fully insured, was properly registered, had its payments up-to-date, was guilty of no violation that we knew of and was parked correctly. We shopped. We came out to find lights flashing, and three police cars and five police officers waiting for us with serious expressions on their faces. They were there for the car. And, as I recall, the way they arranged themselves on Montauk Highway, they blocked at least one of the three lanes.

The matter involved something I knew nothing about, which was a lapse in my auto insurance that had taken place a year-and-a-half earlier when my license plates had been on the car I owned prior to the Tahoe. For a 17-day period, from October 13 to October 31, 2006, the plates suffered an insurance lapse. So now, they were going to tow the car to the East Hampton impound area.

I moved to get into the car because my shoulder bag was in there, and, more importantly, my dog. I was told I could retrieve these things before they towed the car. But I was not to get into the driver's seat. If I even turned the key in the ignition, I would be arrested.

How the police knew about my insurance lapse - I certainly did not know about any insurance lapse - was because they had a special device on the roofs of their police cars that read license plate numbers, and immediately transmit them to Albany. They waited, and if what Albany transmitted back to them showed any sort of violation, even an insurance lapse of a few days a year-and-a-half earlier, bingo - there went the car. I suggested there was some sort of paperwork foul-up.

"Maybe you've got the wrong car," I said.

"We've got the right car," I was told. Indeed, there would not even be any benefit of the doubt, or wiggle room. I would not be driving the car home and leaving it there until things got straightened out. I would not be getting a warning. I would not be doing anything. The Albany computer had spoken.

"I'd get in trouble if I let you off with a warning," the officer said. "We have the facts. We have to act on those facts."

I was in violation of a state motor vehicle law that said that any car that had license plates with a blot on their record would suffer immediate impounding.

As the car went away on its hind legs behind and beneath a tow truck hook, we just stood there, stunned. It was 11 in the morning. The police were gone, off to find more fish to fry, more cars to tow. We were alone.

After a while, quite by chance, somebody we knew drove by and made inquiries about why we were standing there on the street corner with our dog and shopping bags filled with perishables. And so we got a ride home.

Ten days later, after paying a fine, a towing fee, numerous bus fares, a car rental bill and a daily charge for the impound parking, we got the car back. After investigating the matter thoroughly, it was determined by me and our insurance agent that a clerical error had been made by the insurance company during the prior 17 days before the Land Rover (my old car) was turned in and the Tahoe was having the plates from the Land Rover put on it. Somehow, a finger touched a wrong key on a keyboard somewhere. There was, for those last 17 days, no insurance on the Land Rover.

Thank goodness for the East Hampton Village Police. Without their diligence and determination, nobody would ever have known about this 17-day lapse. Because of them and their license plate reader, justice was done, the perps apprehended and the money collected.

It is good to know, as I continue to drive around in my Tahoe, that Albany combed their files for further paperwork errors and found none, that this single blot on the Tahoe's license plate record has been dealt with and nothing else is amiss.

If you look carefully as you drive around East Hampton every day, you will sometimes see members of this police force out there searching for other such violators. Occasionally, they catch one. Maybe they get two or three a day. And there they are. You'll see this scene: three or four police cars hemming in a Mercedes Benz or a BMW or maybe just a pickup truck out there by the side of the road. The policemen will get out of their vehicles, read the legal rights or something to the suspects and call on the radio to Albany to reconfirm the evil deed. Then they summon Jigger with his wrecker once again.

The East Hampton Village Police is their name. Keeping East Hampton safe is their game. And they can do it with those thingamajigs on the roof, believe you me.

Last week it was announced that the Town of East Hampton has purchased a license plate reader to chase down lapsed insurance problems in the same way that the Village of East Hampton does. This means you are not safe in Wainscott, Amagansett, Northwest or Montauk, in addition to the Village of East Hampton.

It was also announced that Nassau County would purchase some of these license plate readers, but would only use them to chase down the cars being driven by people with multiple DWI convictions. This is sensible. I still believe the other is not.