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Published on Thursday, March 18, 2004
in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune
TAMPA, Fla. -- That frame around your license plate proclaiming your love of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers or Orlando Magic could get you a trip to court - and not the basketball kind.
That's what happened to John McMartin. The Tampa radio station engineer received a ticket on New Year's Day because his New York Giants license plate holder obscured the words "Sunshine State" at the bottom of his Florida license plate.
State law requires that everything on a plate - numbers, letters, expiration sticker, and words across the top and bottom - be visible from 100 feet. If they're not, a motorist can be cited, as McMartin learned after receiving a ticket by Florida Highway Patrol Trooper Thomas Gilbert in St. Petersburg for improperly displaying a license plate.
McMartin opted to fight the ticket in court.
"I told my story to the judge," McMartin said during a news conference Tuesday, holding the New York Giants plate frame that took to court. He lost, and was ordered to pay a $56 fine plus costs of the March 9 proceeding.
"It's the trooper's discretion as to how he wants to handle it," said Florida Highway Patrol spokesman Larry Coggins. "It could be issued with a warning for an obscured tag. It could be a corrections notice asking for the tag to be removed, or it can be a citation."