Dessa Kuritz poses with her 2006 Honda and points to the dent left by a federal employee who backed into her in a parking lot.Some of the most basic tenets of American democracy are the ideas that we all are created equal, no one is above the law and we all must adhere to the social contracts that govern our practices and principles.
The investigating officer concluded that the federal employee, referred to as Party 1 in police reports, was at fault. The Jeep driver would have been cited for a state Vehicle Code violation if the accident happened on public property rather than a private parking lot, the officer said. They also spent months ignoring emails and phone calls from Dessa and her family. To this day, she’s driving around with a gaping dent in her car.
The U.S. General Services Administration, the independent agency in charge of managing federal assets and resources, initially demanded more than $4,500 from Dessa to pay for Jeep repairs. The agency did not respond to questions about why six months had elapsed without any resolution to the case.The government’s response to the routine fender-bender has left Dessa a bit disillusioned.