John Bowlin drove on the C470 in Greenwood Village, Colorado, driving his wife to a Cranberries tribute concert for her 40th birthday last May. He paid the $2.40 to enter the express lane after getting onto the freeway, and he crossed over the two white lines to enter it.

A few months later, he received a $75 ticket from the Colorado Transportation Investment Office (CITO) for how he entered the express lane.

“I got in the mail something called a Notice of Civil Penalty, and it said that I had committed a safety violation by weaving in and out of the toll lane on C470,” he told 9News.

Being a trial lawyer for the past 15 years, his experience kicked in and urged him to read the fine print at the bottom of the violation. That’s when he noticed something odd in the verbiage.

“It was called a safety violation,” he recalled. “But you look up the statute that the tolling authority was citing, and it says that they can issue a civil penalty for toll evasion, and I thought to myself, ‘Well, I wasn’t trying to avoid paying the toll.'”

The lawyer put on his gloves to fight the state agency

The reason for the ticket upset him more than the fine. Bowlin produced proof that he paid the express lane’s toll fee, which the ticket argues (per the verbiage) he tried to avoid paying by weaving in and out of the lane.

He endured a virtual trial administrative hearing, where his appeal was denied.

“It was a rubber stamp on behalf of the toll authority,” he said. “It was an administrative hearing with a hearing officer who is employed by the tolling authority.”

So, he paid the extra $30 to appeal it once again, and went back to court. He explained the second trial was essentially a lawsuit against the state. Afterfour months, the judge ruled in Bowlin’s favor.

“The judge eventually held even if entering across that lane might be some kind of traffic infraction that you might be able to get pulled over by a sheriff’s deputy or something like that, that it wasn’t the kind of thing that the tolling authority could just send this notice of civil penalty out and collect $75 for,” he said.

The trials showed him that others might be stuck in the same sticky process

As a practicing lawyer, Bowlin had the knowledge, resources, and skills to fight his ticket. However, the grueling process revealed how many others are potentially trapped in the sticky web set by the CITO.

So, he’s considering filing a class action lawsuit against the agency, and is encouraging other drivers to contact his firm to join him.

“I imagine there are thousands of people, potentially, who have paid the toll but still gotten this ticket, likely most of them paid it,” said Bowlin. “It’s very difficult to hire a lawyer to go and fight this fight for you in a courtroom over a $75 ticket.”