$105,761 Parking Bill Racked Up By $600 Car


Over the last three years Jennifer Fitzgerald, a woman from Illinois, has racked up 678 parking tickets. The 31-year-old single mother, who drives a $600 Chevy Monte Carlo, is now fighting the city of Chicago over a $105,761.80 parking bill.

According to the Huffington Post, Fitzgerald has managed to rack up the largest parking bill Chicago has ever seen.

But Fitzgerald has filed a lawsuit claiming that she did not commit any of the parking infractions and doesn’t even own the car.

The lawsuit states that Fitzgerald’s ex-boyfriend Brandon Preveau purchased the car from her uncle in 2008 for $600. Preveau registered the car, according to the lawsuit, in Jennifer Fitzgerald’s name without her knowledge. After the couple broke up Preveau took the car with him.

Yahoo News reports that the vehicle started to incur huge fines after Fitzgerald and Preveau broke up. The car was abandoned at O’Hare International Airport and started to rack up tickets. The car received tickets for parking violations, expired plates, and for parking in a city owned lot for more than 30 days. The lawsuit claims that Chicago, as well as O’Hare, should have towed the car so that it stopped incurring tickets. Instead, the car was allowed to sit in the lot for nearly three years.

It was finally impounded on April 30, 2012.

Mike Brockway, who runs the Expired Meter Blog, said:

“No one took it upon themselves, took the initiative and said, ‘hey, we got a problem here, this car has been here for months, and years, collecting all these tickets.'”

Fitzgerald claims that if the city had towed the car than the majority of the tickets would have never been issued.

Roderick Drew, spokesman for the city’s Law Department, said that the city was still reviewing the lawsuit and could not comment at this time.

Drew said: “The city hasn’t yet had a chance to review the lawsuit, so we can’t comment at this time.”

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