EZ-PASS tolls and penalties have been a very hot topic issue since New York and New Jersey switched over to cashless billing. To help better explain, we must first understand that MTA, or the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, covers all of New York City while The Port Authority mainly covers New Jersey. We commonly see MTA and Port Authority bills accrue to ten times the level of the original toll. The reason for this is because they accrue penalties of $100 per day per toll. That can then become a significant amount of debt over time as we often see a $1,500 EZ-Pass bill become a $25,000 bill. Whereas MTA commonly sends their defaulted matters into collection with Transworld Systems, a common collection agency, Port Authority takes an additional step by suing consumers and businesses.
The Port Authority does send matters into collection with a firm called Alliance One but what we frequently see are lawsuits coming from the law office of Peter Merani PC. These lawsuits include all of the actual tolls along with the $100 per day penalties equating to very high figure lawsuits. Submitting an answer with defenses and aggressively defending against these excessive penalties is critical in helping clients against Peter Merani’s office. By defending clients in litigation, we have been able to reduce the amount of EZ Pass debt owed to Port Authority by 75%-85% off of the total amount reducing the penalties considerably and getting clients as close to their original toll balance as possible.