A $600 used Chevrolet Monte Carlo sat in a parking lot at Chicago O’Hare International Airport long enough to turn into a six figure problem. By the time the situation became public, the car had been cited a record 678 times and the balance attached to it was reported at more than $106,000. The person whose life was upended was not the person accused of abandoning the vehicle, but the woman whose name was on the registration: Jennifer Fitzgerald.
Fitzgerald’s account, repeated across multiple reports, was that the car’s paperwork did not reflect who actually used and controlled it. She said her then boyfriend, Brandon Preveau, bought the Monte Carlo in 2008 from her uncle for $600, then registered it with the state under her name without her knowledge.
When the relationship ended, she said she did not have control of the vehicle or the ability to simply take it back, but the city’s ticket notices kept arriving in her mailbox because the registration pointed to her.
According to reporting based on the lawsuit, the break became the turning point. In 2009, Preveau allegedly left the Monte Carlo in an O’Hare parking lot and walked away. The Texas Public Radio report states the car began collecting tickets on November 17, 2009, and adds that Preveau worked at O’Hare, which was important in the case because Fitzgerald said the vehicle was in an employee lot she could not access. DNAinfo similarly reported that she said she was unable to retrieve the car from the lot while it sat in the same spot for about two and a half years.
The longer the car remained, the more the citations multiplied. What started as a basic parking issue expanded into a drumbeat of violations that reflected a vehicle slowly decaying in place. Accounts describing the complaint list tickets for issues such as improperly tinted windows, no city sticker, expired plates or registration, broken lights, and cracked or missing windows, along with citations that treated the car as hazardous or dilapidated. Over time, the paper trail grew into one of the largest ticket totals anyone in the city could remember, and Fitzgerald rose to the top of Chicago’s scofflaw list in news coverage.
According to reporting based on the lawsuit, the break became the turning point. In 2009, Preveau allegedly left the Monte Carlo in an O’Hare parking lot and walked away. The Texas Public Radio report states the car began collecting tickets on November 17, 2009, and adds that Preveau worked at O’Hare, which was important in the case because Fitzgerald said the vehicle was in an employee lot she could not access. DNAinfo similarly reported that she said she was unable to retrieve the car from the lot while it sat in the same spot for about two and a half years.
The longer the car remained, the more the citations multiplied. What started as a basic parking issue expanded into a drumbeat of violations that reflected a vehicle slowly decaying in place. Accounts describing the complaint list tickets for issues such as improperly tinted windows, no city sticker, expired plates or registration, broken lights, and cracked or missing windows, along with citations that treated the car as hazardous or dilapidated. Over time, the paper trail grew into one of the largest ticket totals anyone in the city could remember, and Fitzgerald rose to the top of Chicago’s scofflaw list in news coverage.
The ending came a few months later through settlement, not through Fitzgerald paying the original bill. In August 2013, the city agreed to drop more than $100,000 of the fines and reduce the total to $4,470. DNAinfo reported that Preveau made a $1,600 down payment, and Fitzgerald would pay $78 per month for three years to clear the rest.
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