Fire Department Violations
When I first started practicing law, neither I nor any other lawyer plying the halls of the criminal courts of New York City ever heard of fire department summonses. Well, that is not exactly accurate. Although we all knew they existed, we never actually represented any clients who received them.
Except for really serious safety problems that were a threat to life, there were very few summonses issued for violations of the fire codes. Rather, what used to happen was that when the fire inspectors found a violation, they told you that they would be back in a week or two to make sure that you had properly taken care of the problem. And the citizenry complied with the code.
That was before the great financial crisis and our electing one of the richest men in America as our mayor. Michael Bloomberg is a brilliant business man above all else. He knows how to make money. He is an extremely efficient administrator and a brilliant delegator. That is why he worth about twenty billion dollars. For better or worse, Mayor Bloomberg runs his mayoralty as a business and he appears to be rather out of touch with the life of a normal middle class (or poor or even regular rich) person. To help resolve the city's massive financial problems, he has taken advantage of every possible path to promote and raise revenues. Unfortunately, he occasionally forgets that most of us cannot afford to shell out as much money as he tries to exact from us. Also, he seems to forget that there are places other than Manhattan in New York City. Oh well.
Back to fire summonses. If you receive a fire summons or a building safety violation, you should hire a lawyer who handles these matters. It will almost always be worth the price. while the default penalties for these violations are generally astronomical, a lawyer will generally be able to negotiate a fine that is significantly less than the maximum, even considering the money you have to pay to the lawyer.
While I hope that you never receive such a summonses, if you do receive one, I suggest that you hire a lawyer to minimize the amount of money you will have to fork over to Mayor Mike. Good luck!