Unpaid tolls put couple in a fine mess

Don’t you hate those people who try to sneak that 11th item through the grocery checkout counter? Or the guy who hops into the carpool lane with his pet mannequin?

Wouldn’t you just love to sock it to ‘em?

Come now the Wilsons of Riverside County -- Willie and Cynthia -- described by their attorney as “working-class folks like you and me.”

With one key difference, I would suggest.

You and I aren’t on the hook for $90,000 to the Orange County Transportation Authority for using the 91 Express Lanes with expired transponders.

Sometime today, the Wilsons may find out whether Orange County Superior Court Judge Frederick Horn has a sense of humor about that sort of thing. The Wilsons are asking him to dismiss OCTA’s demand for payment.

Irvine attorney Roger Buffington represents the couple and says the mess is a big misunderstanding that may have stemmed from a year of cancer treatments Cynthia Wilson faced either in 2001 or 2002. During that time, he says, the Wilsons were “spending a lot of time away from home, she was in the hospital and staying with relatives....”

The couple had two transponders that they’d been using during trips between Riverside and Orange counties, Buffington says. Both eventually expired, but Buffington says the couple didn’t realize it because the units beeped every time they entered the toll lanes.

At some point, OCTA began sending them notices.

That’s where the only mystery arises. Buffington says the Wilsons told him they never received any notices. Each time they drove the Express Lanes without paying a fee, they got fined.

And it’s not the fees that’ll kill you, it’s the fines.

Buffington says the couple owes $739.83 in unpaid fees. The fines, he says, push the total over $90,000.

“OCTA says they sent them any number of notices,” Buffington says. “The Wilsons don’t appear to have any knowledge of that.”

They never got any of them? Nope, Buffington says, not even a notice that the Wilsons could attend an administrative hearing.

Buffington says people ought to be able to relate to a couple facing a medical crisis.

The Wilsons may not have been as diligent about checking mail, he says.

And they have told him there were ongoing problems with mail at a communal mailbox in their complex. Or, he says, it may have simply been an oversight on their part.

Even as the fines were mounting, Buffington says the Wilsons were never approached or notified by a process server.

That changed two months ago, he says, when the Wilsons were served, in person, as part of OCTA’s demand that they appear for a “debtors’ examination” to reveal their finances.

“Our contention is that one of the things that shows the Wilsons didn’t have knowledge is that they acted promptly once they did have knowledge,” Buffington says, noting that they went to the Orange County courthouse to review the case file and then hired him. “It would have been a lot easier to nip this in the bud a long time ago.”

I asked Buffington to put me in touch with the Wilsons. He said he tried, but couldn’t reach them.

Now I can understand OCTA’s problem.

And now they face Judge Horn. “We’re not arguing that they shouldn’t be subject to any kind of fine,” Buffington says. “They should have to pay the $739 and what the court thinks is a reasonable fine.”

The crux of the matter, he says, is the ridiculous way the fines accumulate over time.

The OCTA fine structure and notification procedure, Buffington argues, violates the U.S. Constitution prohibition on excessive fines and ignores their due process rights.

He said the size of the fines also violates public policy regarding forfeiture of assets.

Kirk Avila, general manager of the Express Lanes, won’t say what the agency will do about the Wilsons. He noted, however, that their file shows 175 violations on the toll lanes.

And yes, he says, it’s possible the fines could mount to $90,000 because the State Vehicle Code allows them to grow quickly after repeat violations.

As for why the Wilsons wouldn’t have received notices, Avila can’t say. Over the phone, I couldn’t tell if he was rolling his eyes or not. The whole idea of toll lanes, he says, is to make sure people pay their fair share.

I’ll take a wild guess that the U.S. Supreme Court won’t be interested in this case.

I’ll take another flier that OCTA isn’t interested in nailing the Wilsons for $90,000.

So, somehow, the parties will work this out.

And when that’s done, let’s turn our attention to those checkout counter violators.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at

dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.