You can fight City Hall, BC mom learns

Bethany Lindsay, ctvbc.ca
Date: Friday Nov. 5, 2010A mom who was fined a "frivolous" $500 for littering when she planted her son's broken skateboard in front of Kamloops City Hall in protest has won her legal battle against the bylaw office.
After more than a year of argument with bylaw officers about the legality of longboarding within city limits, teenager Nik Marshall's trusty skateboard was impounded in January when he refused to pay a $100 fine for boarding in a forbidden area. When he mentioned he owned a second deck, bylaw officers visited him at home to confiscate a broken board that Nik was using as decoration in his bedroom. His mother Charlotte Shaw drove to City Hall to fetch the longboard she says Nik used to get around town. She was told that she would have to retrieve the broken board as well. Each board would cost $25 to get out of impound. "I said, ‘I just want the one -- I don't want to pay for more than that,'" Shaw told ctvbc.ca. But she was told that would be impossible -- she would have to pay $50 for both of the boards or go home with neither. "I said many times: ‘This is bullshit,'" she said. "They described me as angry and out of control...but I was just trying to be assertive." Finally, Shaw decided to pay the $50, but she wasn't prepared to give in without a fight. "I took them outside to my truck. I took the broken one and I planted it in the cedar chips in the garden," she said.  Two days later, bylaw officers delivered her a $500 ticket for littering.

She disputed it in bylaw court, but lost the case. Not only that, she was told that she could go to jail for the offence, and the justice of the peace presiding over the case told her that her behaviour was setting a bad example for her children. "I've been called a lot of names over this. Many people have accused me of bad parenting, of not taking 'No' for an answer," Shaw said.  "I didn't set out to cause a dispute. I just said, ‘This isn't right.'" With the help of a local lawyer, Shaw decided to appeal the fine in B.C. Supreme Court. As it turns out, Supreme Court Judge Hope Hyslop agreed with Shaw's feeling about the fine, and overturned it in a decision on Thursday. "The prosecution of Ms. Shaw was frivolous and may have had oblique motives by some of the bylaw enforcement employees," Hyslop wrote."The littering that Ms. Shaw was convicted is of a minor and insignificant in nature, which deserves a minor and insignificant fine." The judge reduced the fine to $25, but also ordered the Crown to pay Shaw $318.92 in costs. She also said that it was wrong for the bylaw officers to force Shaw to pay for the retrieval of the broken board.(more)