One of my favorite features in The New York Times Magazine is "The Ethicist" -- a column/blog/podcast devoted to interesting personal ethical dilemmas that we face in our daily lives.

Here is one from Milwaukee.

A friend (it's always a friend, isn't it?) was attending a social function on a Thursday evening at an establishment on Brady Street. The event started at roughly 7:30 p.m., but my friend had trouble finding a parking space. After a few trips around the block, my friend decided to park in a city lot behind Apollo Cafe and other businesses.

The lot was nearly full on this particular chilly, somewhat snowy night, but my friend parked and walked to function without incident.

Upon returning to the lot, my friend discovered that the meters in the lot need to be fed during evening hours. My friend learned this via the parking ticket affixed to the windshield. The time on the ticket indicated that it had been written roughly 7 minutes before my friend arrived.

After cursing the misfortune, my friend pocketed the ticket, said "My mistake" and vowed to pay it in a few days.

As a worker who frequents businesses both Downtown and on the East Side, my friend is not a stranger to parking tickets and has found that paying them online is the least painless method for disposal and has bookmarked the site for easier access

This is where the fun starts ...

My friend visited the city's parking Web site, entered the vehicle's license plate number and saw there was no ticket recorded. No big deal. Sometimes, it takes a day or two for the transgressions to hit the computer system.

A couple days later, my friend returned to the site, entered the plate number and again found nothing. At this point, my friend grabbed the hard copy of the ticket and realized that the parking checker had made a mistake. Though the make and model were accurate, the license number as recorded on the ticket was off by one number -- an honest mistake probably prompted by the reduced visibility of a snowy night.

Here is the question -- Since the city has no record of my friend violating the parking ordinance, should said friend pay the ticket in question? Or, should the friend use the "no harm, no foul" defense by saying "they city screwed up."

Use the Talkback feature to let us know what you think.