By Scott Taylor,Staff Writer

LEWISTON – A judge has ordered the owner of an impromptu Main Street junkyard to pay $39,000 in fines to the City of Lewiston.

District Court Judge Robert Beaudoin found in favor of the city in a case involving abandoned cars on a lot just south of Larrabee Road.

“The lesson seems to be that it can be pretty expensive to fight the city,” said Planning Director Gil Arsenault.

Jean Paradis owns the lot at 1097 Main St., and it’s regularly been used for auto repair shops. The city got involved last spring, when then-tenant Virgil Salley began storing abandoned cars there. That was a violation of zoning ordinances, according to the city. It issued two violation orders, on April 8 and May 26, demanding that the abandoned cars be removed.

Salley eventually moved on and Paradis found a new tenant, but never disputed the violations with the city, Arsenault said.

“It appears he wanted to have his day in court,” Arsenault said.

That ended up costing Salley. According to Beaudoin’s Dec. 29 decision, Paradis and Salley should have challenged the violations with the city before taking the case to court.

Beaudoin found Paradis liable for fines of $100 per day for 168 days for one violation and for 122 days for a second violation, as well as court costs. He’ll split the court costs with Salley, who is liable for additional fines. The final tally comes to $39,000.

“The point of all this is, we didn’t want it to end like this,” Arsenault said. “We’d much rather have them spend their money on improving their property, not paying fines.”

Arsenault said the city was willing to settle the matter with Paradis, without charging fines.

“He would have had 30 days to move the cars, and we wouldn’t have involved our attorneys so there would have been no legal fees,” Arsenault said.

Paradis’ attorney, Stephen Beale, declined to comment Wednesday.

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