He registered a $600 Chevy in his ex-girlfriend’s name and abandoned it at O’Hare. 678 tickets later, she took the $105,761 bill to court
Jennifer claimed in the lawsuit that she is not liable to pay the fine for a vehicle she never owned
In February 2008, while Jennifer Fitzgerald and Brandon Preveau were dating and raising their daughter, Zoe, Preveau bought a $600 1999 purple Chevy Monte Carlo from Fitzgerald's uncle. But her uncle later signed the car's title over to Fitzgerald instead of Preveau. Although Preveau was the principal driver and paid for the car, its registration left Fitzgerald on the hook when the vehicle was later abandoned at Chicago O'Hare International Airport. By December 2009, she had started receiving notices for tickets issued to the car. A November 27, 2012, report by Click Orlando News 6 said the car had accumulated 678 tickets totaling $105,761.80 in fines. Fitzgerald subsequently sued the city, her ex-boyfriend, and United Airlines.
Case of mistaken identity
According to the lawsuit, when Preveau bought the Monte Carlo from Fitzgerald's uncle, the vehicle's title was assigned to Fitzgerald instead of Preveau for reasons that weren't clear. Although Preveau was the car's principal driver, he paid for the car, its license plates, the Chicago city sticker, and insurance. Fitzgerald said she did not drive the car after February 2009. In November 2009, the discarded vehicle started racking up tickets on account of being "hazardous" and "dilapidated." But since Preveau paid for the car and the car insurance, the single mother claimed that she bore no liability to pay $105,000 in fines because she wasn’t supposed to be the owner.
According to the lawsuit she filed in Cook County Circuit Court, a judge told Fitzgerald in 2011 that she must transfer the car’s title out of her name. She said she signed over the title to Preveau, but claimed he "intentionally did not register the transfer of title with the Illinois Secretary of State." According to a Chicago Department of Aviation law, cited by ABC News, signs are posted at O’Hare that mention that if a vehicle is in the parking lot for more than 30 days, without any knowledge of the lot operators, then the company will first attempt to contact the owner. If the owner is unavailable, the vehicle will be towed to another lot and ultimately to the city impound lot.
678 tickets and a $105,000 problem
Despite the vehicle sitting in the same spot for years, the Monte Carlo continued accumulating tickets. By the time the case came to public attention in 2012, it had received 678 tickets totaling $105,761.80 — an extraordinary amount for a car Fitzgerald said was worth only $600. The car was eventually towed from the airport, but Fitzgerald was left fighting a six-figure bill attached to a vehicle she said she had never intended to own.
What does the law say?
According to the City of Chicago, a privatization program was launched in 1989 to perform the towing job for abandoned vehicles. If the vehicles are not redeemed by the owners, they are sold for scrap. Ever since that program, more than 500,000 abandoned vehicles have been towed and impounded. A 311Info report states that the City received 258.2K reports for abandoned vehicles between January 2021 and July 31, 2026. In Fitzgerald's case, her attorney argued that the city should have towed the car much earlier instead of allowing hundreds of tickets to accumulate. The vehicle remained in the O'Hare lot for about 2½ years before it was finally towed, per CBS News.
A $4,470 bill
The city eventually agreed to drop $100,000 in ticket fines against Fitzgerald and left her with a final bill of $4,470, per DNA Info Chicago. Preveau was supposed to pay the initial down payment of $1,600, and Fitzgerald would pay an additional $78 per month until the fine was dissolved. Her driver's license, which had been suspended because of the unpaid tickets, could be restored after the reduced fine was paid.
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