ILL-inois: Chicago woman fights $105K in parking tickets for $600 car

Towing: A more prudent solution

Parking tickets have long been racket in Chicago. For instance, when I placed a "For Sale" on a sports car I had to sell after Little Marathon Pundit was born, I received two parking tickets for my capitalistic endeavor. It is illegal to place such signs on vehicles parked on Chicago streets. Not only is that a stupid law, it's another reason why I'm glad I moved to the suburbs.

But there is a woman who has a much more serious problem. And the courts aren't much help to her, as CBS Chicago tells us:

Last November, WBBM's Regine Schlesinger reported about Jennifer Fitzgerald, a single mother from Chicago.

She says the record $105,000 in tickets on her $600 clunker were incurred after her former boyfriend abandoned the car for nearly three years in an employee parking lot at O’Hare Airport.

Police kept ticketing the car over and over and over again.

She sued the city, but a judge has dismissed the lawsuit and urged both sides to reach a settlement.

That judge proposed a $2,500 fine instead, but Fitzgerald doesn't have the funds even for that "low" figure. Of course O'Hare maintenance crews could have just towed the car a few days after it was illegally parked, but that action would have brought the city just a few hundred dollars.

Chicago's population is at a ninety-year low.

And Chicago is in ILL-inois.

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