Judge: car owner not liable
Because Donnamarie Fontaine of Santa Monica isn’t wearing a cervical collar, she believes she’s out $3,600 in a case one judge likened to a crapshoot.
Fontaine was an innocent driver whose parked car was hit by a man who had just been shot at the wheel of his car, probably in a gang-related drive-by shooting on Fifth Street. Though the stricken man’s car totaled Fontaine’s vehicle, a judge ruled she should have sued the shooter instead.
Fontaine brought the matter to Santa Monica small claims court in an attempt to recoup her losses. But the burden of proof fell hard on Fontaine. Her brush with gang life has left her miffed, not so much with crime as with the justice system.
“This is not justice when I am sitting there minding my own business at 8:30 at night two days after Christmas in my living room watching Who Wants To Be A Millionaire... how can I be out almost $4,000?” she said during her testimony. “If there is no justice here, I can’t even begin to tell you how I will lose faith in the system....”
“This is not justice when I am sitting there minding my own business at 8:30 at night two days after Christmas in my living room watching Who Wants To Be A Millionaire... how can I be out almost $4,000?” — DONNAMARIE FONTAINE Santa Monica resident
Fontaine gambled on a favorable ruling rather than taking a $2,500 offer from the insurance carrier covering Juan Juarez, who owned the target car. She made her decision even though pro tem judge Sheldon Cone hinted that she accept the offer.
“This is Las Vegas. You are about to roll the dice. If you lose, you get nothing,” he told her. “It’s not a slam dunk for you.”
Juarez wasn’t driving the target car. At the wheel was his ex-stepdaughter’s boyfriend, who was shot in the back, reportedly by a rival gang member. The judge in the case was persuaded that his mere ownership of the car involved in the shooting doesn’t make him liable for damages. The trigger man was probably responsible, he held.
Fontaine sued without an attorney in small claims court because she was short of cash. “No one wants to take the case because it doesn’t generate enough money... no one is walking around in a cervical collar,” she said. She suggested that had she sustained an obvious injury, lawyers would have beat a path to court for her.
The case apparently wasn’t easy to decide. The first judge to hear it said he’d never seen anything like it in his 30-plus years in legal practice. So he passed it on to Cone, who ruled by mail that Juarez owes her nothing.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on November 17, 2001. Read the original PDF.