“When I saw the parking ticket I just sighed,” Martin von Wirén told The Local.

“I read that I could appeal and I was sure I had a reasonable cause for cancellation of my ticket.”

Von Wirén, an assistant nurse at the university hospital in Linköping, couldn’t leave to renew his parking during an especially busy night in March.

The nurse knew that the spot where he parked his car was a “no parking zone” between 10pm and 11pm, but when he arrived for his shift he was certain he would be able to find a new spot before that. An unusually steady stream of patients, however, prevented this from happening.

When von Wirén finally went outside to move his vehicle, the ticket warden had gotten there before him. Due to the unusual workload at the hospital that night, however, von Wirén felt sure he could easily lodge an appeal and dispute the fine.

This proved easier said than done. The parking ticket company said that a note from the hospital was not enough to cancel the ticket.

Von Wirén then contacted the company twice, but has yet to receive an explanation.

“My friends and I thought all along that ‘they can’t possibly make me pay’ but apparently we were all wrong.”

Von Wiren always planned to pay the ticket with his own money, even though his employer offered to pay it for him. The nurse, however, didn’t want to waste taxpayer money.

The nurse said he had little hope of resolving the situation and wanted to stress how absurd he found the parking ticket company’s behaviour.

“I’ve gotten three parking tickets in my life, including this one, but the first two were definitely my fault,” he told The Local.

“This is without a doubt the worst parking ticket I’ve received or heard of to date.”

Sanna Håkansson