Home >Police Enforcement > Taxes and Tolls > California: Toll Road Charges Cancer Patient's Family $43,638

Related News Michigan Lawmakers Consider Repeal of Driver Responsibility Tax Pennsylvania Resurrects Plan to Toll Interstate 80 Freeway Maryland Politicians, Judges, Bureaucrats Drive Toll Free California Toll Road Refunds Excessive Penalties Mass Transit Programs Only Serve 6.9 Million Customers View Main Topics: Camera Enforcement    Speed Cameras    Red Light Cameras    Revenue from Cameras    Camera Accuracy    Engineering/Signals Police Enforcement    Random Checkpoints    Speed Limits/Traps    Tickets and Cash    Seizure/Confiscation    Parking Tickets    Taxes and Tolls    Drunk Driving Laws Miscellaneous Issues    Miscellaneous    Hypocrisy    Bad Policy and Injustice    Propaganda    New Technologies    Privacy Issues The Revolt    Protests    Camera Destruction Subscribe via RSS or E-Mail Back To Front Page

12/23/2005 California: Toll Road Charges Cancer Patient's Family $43,638 Family pays more attention to helping ease suffering of teenage daughter than to tolls. Officials charge family $43,638. The Orange County, California Transportation Authority claims the family of David and Elizabeth Casillas owed $43,638 in toll road penalties. The couple admits that it used the 91 Express Lane toll road in Corona without a working transponder between September 2003 and January 2004. The majority of the unpaid trips involved taking their sixteen-year-old daughter Camie to and from the Children's Hospital of Orange County for treatment of type-ALL leukemia. "We're just enjoying our time with her," Elizabeth Casillas, 35, said. The family, at times, kept an around-the-clock vigil in Camie's hospital room. Easing their daughter's suffering was the only thing on the couple's mind -- they gave little thought to the unpaid tolls, which only amounted to $140.84. They expected to pay both the tolls along with a reasonable penalty sometime later. Instead, officials charged the family nearly $500 for each of the ninety untolled trips. "I figured they would have sent me a $50 fine or something," Elizabeth Casillas told the Press-Enterprise. "When you have a sick child in your car, that is the last thing on your mind." Casillas had a FasTrak transponder in the car, but it was linked to a bank card account that had closed. Casillas failed to update the account. Ignoring the family's plight, toll road officials recently forced the family to pay a $10,000 settlement by blocking their attempt to refinance their home to pay medical bills. This penalty came on top of a stroke that disabled David Casillas, 31, last July and Camie's death from cancer last December. Source: Couple's violations add up: $43,638 (Press-Enterprise (Riverside, CA), 12/21/2005) Permanent Link for this item Return to Front Page

Front Page | Get Updates | Site Map | News Achive | Search | theNewspaper.com: A journal of the politics of driving