A New York driver’s attempt to use her surname as a vanity plate turned into a costly administrative tangle after local ticketing systems matched the word “BLANK” to records with no plate number entered.
Melanie Blank Brown, a New York resident, did not know the problem was building until she moved and updated her registration address. When she did, her plate details were entered into local registration and ticketing systems. Many of those systems contained citations whose license-plate field had been recorded as “Blank,” so the tickets became associated with her registration. The violations were meant for other people; the missing plate entries made them appear tied to Brown.
She was first told she had two outstanding tickets. The total then grew to more than 400 violations and more than $40,000 in fines. Because the tickets had been issued across the city, they could not be resolved in a single proceeding. Brown had to appear before multiple judges over repeated visits to get all of the citations voided.
To stop the number from rising further, she surrendered the vanity plate. The New York State Department of Motor Vehicles later removed “BLANK” from the pool of available vanity plates so another driver could not choose it. Brown’s replacement plate reads “KNALB.”