Following a near 20-minute small-claims trial in Pitkin County Court, Judge Erin Fernandez-Ely determined that Queer’s jaws of justice actually were an injustice to plaintiff Christine Kemp, a Basalt woman who sued him June 20 after he booted her vehicle.
Queer charged the woman, whose car was parked behind Explore Booksellers, $200 to not boot her vehicle. She paid the fee but told the judge she had simply dashed in and out of the bookstore — about a 10-minute round-trip, she claimed — when she spotted Queer poised to clamp her car.
“As soon as I came out he was standing there,” she said. “It was a matter of running in and out of the store. I begged him and said, ‘Please, I’m leaving now.'”
The judge split the difference, citing the Colorado Public Utilities Commissions’ “drop fees,” which are what towing companies are legally required to charge motorists who return to their illegally parked vehicle before it is towed away. Fernandez-Ely said she could find no local laws that pertain to drop fees, so she relied on a Denver ordinance as well as the Public Utilities Commission rule. The PUC has a maximum drop fee of $70.
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