What to do with mis-issued Health Dept. violation.

It was something building owners get on a regular basis: a visit on May 1, 1995 from a Department of Health inspector who issued a violation for rodents.

Unfortunately, the person the Department sent this vermin violation to on June 30th did not own the building. The person was my husband, Eric S. Weiss, who had, coincidentally, represented the property in reducing its real estate taxes in tax year 1992.

He wrote letters - sent certified mail return receipt requested - and made phone calls to Department of Health officials. While they commiserated, they told him he would have to "prove he didn't own the building."

One official advised him it was a computer error, someone looked in the wrong "field" and found his name. Another swore it would be corrected, no problem. But the mailings from DOH continued, unabated.

The long-vacant warehouse property had been owned by a lending institution that was Eric's client in 1992, right before it was shut down by the FDIC. After checking with the Department of Finance, we determined the address in the city's records is still c/o the long-shut out-of-town offices in New York State.

Tracking the property with the Building Department yielded a newer address c/o a real person in a Massachusetts FDIC office. But an FDIC spokesperson informed me that the person didn't show up at either that office or the office in Maryland where all of those operations had moved.

Somehow, however, the real estate taxes have been getting paid, probably because the FDIC handles it by computer tape.

On the Saturday before the hearing date, Eric received another warning of the impending hearing that Wednesday. Like the Energizer Bunny, the computer was spitting out the notices and no address correction had been made.

Smelling a story, I volunteered to represent him at the hearing, arguing that if he had a judgement against him, as his wife, I would be just as liable for the fine. Besides, my time was less valuable than his. With his own practice and current clients to consider, he gladly agreed.

Eric brought the file home the night before the hearing. Reading the tiny, tiny print on the back with the help of a magnifying glass, I discovered that despite the 1 p.m. time set for the hearing, all contested hearings are held at 9:30 a.m. and if you miss the time, a default judgement is entered. This was not a notice designed to bring on sleep.

At 8:55 a.m., after putting the last child on a school bus, I tried to call the number for the clerk at 111 Livingston Street in Brooklyn, and after dozens of rings someone answered and said they did not work until 9 a.m. and hung up.

At 9 a.m. I called back and after someone responded, they hung up again. The phone was busy for another five minutes after that. By repeatedly re-dialing, I finally got through to a live person - a miracle!

She asked me if I had requested an inspector be present, and I said, "No."

"Then you don't have to be here at 9:30," she said.

Thankfully, however, she did tell me to come as soon as possible, because after 9:30 a.m. all hearings are taken in order of arrival. "What about my 1 p.m. hearing time?," I asked. "Oh, that doesn't matter," she said.

I raced out the door and with a New York City street map in hand, found Livingston Street in the middle of Downtown Brooklyn, a few blocks from Cadman Square, the Montague Street retail district, the main court buildings, Borough Hall and Metro-Tech. The subway is close, there are many parking garages but on-street parking is severely limited due to spaces reserved for government officials.

The court is held on an upper floor in the office building and marching off the elevator at about 10:15 a.m., I went directly to the teller's window and signed in on the sheet. A cramped waiting room has about 20 seats and nearly all were already filled. Within minutes, there were a dozen more people standing and waiting in the hallway. An hour or two, I sighed to myself, glad I had brought newspapers and a book.

Surprisingly, it didn't take long to be called for my hearing, maybe 15 or 20 minutes. I went into a very tiny room where the hearing officer prepared his papers and then turned on a tape recorder. He read the docket number and complaint and then asked me to speak.

I told him I knew nothing about whether or not vermin were present at the premises, but what I did know was that my husband didn't own the building.

And bye the way, they spelled his last name wrong on the notice. There was also a discrepancy in the original date of the inspection and on another of the notices.

He asked how they got my husband's name and I told him we surmised that it was because of the 1992 representation.

When he asked why my husband hadn't written the Department of this fact, I produced copies of the letters he had sent. The hearing officer tried to keep a straight face, but was obviously annoyed that the system had gone so awry.

He told me he would reserve decision, and my heart sank, but then, he continued, if I waited outside, I would know the decision in a few minutes. He made a copy of one of my husband's letters and then handed me back the original.

I listened as address after address was called by the clerk, who sits in a small caged area, and people were told they were to pay $500 or $600 dollars within 30 days. No one's fines were dismissed.

The other people waiting were mostly restaurant owners. One man said he was being fined for not using internal thermometers. "Didn't you know you were supposed to use them," I asked? "No," he said. "When I took the (food handling) course 15 years ago you didn't need them. Now I guess I'll take another course."

Then I heard, of all things, my home address being called. I went to the window and the teller said the violation was dismissed, handing me a copy of the decision. My heart lifted and with a smile I went home.

A Department of Health spokesperson, Fredric Winters, said this was the first case he had heard of where a certiorari attorney was sent the violation years after the representation. "This is a very wacky story and I would like to get to the bottom of it," he said.

Winters said several automation projects are underway to increase the department's efficiency, including a pilot program for the inspectors to use hand-held computers and a computerization of the Departments records.

"We are aware of the problem overall of hand-written reports and inefficiently stored records," he said, "and are well into projects to end that problem. Glitches like this are embarrassing and a very legitimate annoyance to people like your husband."

Last week, Eric got another Department of Health vermin violation in his name, complete with a different misspelling. This one was for yet a different client on a different property. A DOH official promised he would sit his people down to show them what they were doing wrong.

Still, it looks like I'm going to be making a lot of trips to 111 Livingston Street.