City settles tow-truck incident for $7,500

City settles tow-truck incident for $7,500
Payment resolves threat of litigation

By MARK REITER
BLADE STAFF WRITER

The city has paid $7,500 to resolve litigation that was threatened over a vehicle-towing incident last year involving an employee in Toledo's Department of Neighborhoods.

The out-of-court settlement was reached recently with George Pratt, who threatened to sue the city after he was acquitted of assaulting a tow truck operator during an alleged nuisance complaint at his West Toledo home. "We made a settlement with him," John Madigan, acting law director, said last week. "We felt that there might have been potential liability against the city.'' The payout stems from an incident in July, 2005, when Sue Frederick, who is manager of city's code enforcement division, asked Mr. Pratt to remove a truck and trailer from the yard at his home on Strauss Street. When he refused, Ms. Frederick called a private tow-truck operator, who was injured after he was chest-bumped by Mr. Pratt, court records said. Mr. Pratt was charged with misdemeanor assault in Toledo Municipal Court in connection with the incident. City prosecutors later amended the charge to disorderly conduct. The case went to trial in May, and Judge C. Allen McConnell dismissed the minor misdemeanor charge after hearing testimony from two witnesses. Ms. Frederick, an attorney who previously worked in the city law department, was involved in other altercations involving vehicle towing. Jerome Phillips, an attorney who represents Mr. Pratt, said the incident with the tow-truck operator wouldn't have occurred if his client's vehicles had not wrongly been tagged for removal from the yard. The truck and trailer were parked in the yard so that Mr. Pratt could remove materials for a fence that he was building in the yard, records said. Mr. Phillips said Ms. Frederick testified that the truck was a nuisance because it could have leaked fluids into the yard. She also told Judge McConnell that she didn't check for contamination on the ground when she tagged the vehicles, he said. "But that never occurred. Instead, she issued a citation for failure to comply with an order, even though there was no immediate danger and the vehicles were not a nuisance," Mr. Phillips said. Mr. Madigan said he wouldn't comment on the incident, in part because others whose vehicles were tagged for similar reasons might want to file litigation against the city. In a letter to the city, Mr. Phillips said hundreds of vehicles could have been towed under the guise of a public nuisance even though the vehicles were on the property of their owner. "It appears this may give rise to a potential class-action lawsuit," he wrote. The settlement was reached this month. The payment didn't need City Council's approval because the judgment was under $10,000. Last December, Ms. Frederick, 49, was accused of arguing with the owner of a parked vehicle and threatened to have his vehicle towed during a dispute with the movement of a recycling truck. Then a manager in the Toledo department of economic and community development, she was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, both misdemeanors. She pleaded no contest in April to an amended minor misdemeanor charge of failure to aid a law enforcement officer.


I think I might call that lawyer tomorrow and see what he can do for me and the city towing my 1991 ford Pickup