52 Ancestors Week 33: Legal Troubles

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 33:

The theme for Week 33 is "Legal Troubles."There’s at least one in every family – that relative who seems to be in trouble more often than not. (Hey, at least they usually leave good records!) Who in your family tree had brushes with the legal system?

The law offices of Murdock and Walters are here to help.

    If only the law offices of Murdock and Walters were real. If only. We could see some heads bonked in and out of court. See the Disney + shows "She-Hulk: Attorney at Law" and "Daredevil: Born Again" for details. Good shows in my not so humble opinion. Who needs "Ally McBeal" when you've got superhero lawyers representing you? 

    Anyway, I'm pretty sure several people in my family tree have needed a very good lawyer at one point in their lives. There have been custody battles and messy divorces all around my family tree.  It's honestly hard to keep track of all the chaos. I've even had one guy who was sent back to San Pietro a Maida because of a still unrevealed reason. It's 2025 and I'm still wondering why Francesco Papatolo was sent back to Italy! Here's hoping I have the answer to that question some day. For those of you keeping score, Francesco was the son of Vincenzo Papatolo and Concetta Coppola. Concetta was the sister of my 2nd great-grandmother, Caterina.

    Francesco wasn't the only Papatolo who had legal troubles, of course. A while back I found that Francesco's sister Angelina had her very own day in court. Angelina's life was very different from her older brother's. She was born in Haverhill, Mass on November 4th, 1911. She married a Greek man named Arthur Soterakopoulos some time before 1928 when their son Dino was born. 

    Arthur and Angelina lived in Haverhill in a house that wasn't too far away from her mother's house. To say that the family was close was a bit of an understatement. Her father Vincenzo passed away in 1933 and so the family stayed relatively close by. 

    Everything was going well for the Soterakopoulos family until a car crashed through their house injuring Angie on October 20th, 1936. Thankfully, she survived and honestly things could have been a lot worse for her.

    According to an article I found, a man named Francis J. Foley drove his car into her house on Hilldale Avenue while she and her family slept. After the accident, Angie filed what the article called "an unusual civil suit". It must have been unusual for the time because these days people STILL drive cars into buildings.

    On February 4th, 1937 a civil suit was filed by Angelina. In the lawsuit, she explained the situation and was suing Foley for three thousand dollars. There's no doubt she needed the money to repair the house. A shadier lawyer might have gotten three times that out of Foley. I digress.

    Angelina was suing him over the injuries she received in the crash. She was frightened, jumped out of bed and fell to the floor. In the suit, she explained how she received serious injuries from that fall. 

    To make matters worse, Foley had another suit filed against him by Angie's husband Arthur! Arthur wanted another thousand dollars as he "temporarily lost her comfort and assistance as a result of the accident".

    I'm not sure what that meant. I'm guessing it had to do with psychological trauma and PTSD. That's probably the most logical way to explain it. She was rightfully scared and injured thanks to the incident. The thousand dollars was likely going to go for Angelina's medical bills. In total, Foley had to pay the Soterakopoulos family (The family was also called Siros. Long story.) four thousand dollars. Yikes. And keep in mind that this was at the height of the Great Depression! Double Yikes! Someone was seriously going to be living in a van down by the river after this case and it wasn't going to be Angie.

    I'm not sure what the outcome of the case was as I found this article a few months ago. I sent it to my cousin Karen and she never heard of the incident. In fact, her father James was around three years old when the accident happened.  I think I will have to e-mail the Essex county courthouse and see what records they have on the case. They helped me out with Felker v. Stevens case when I asked for their divorce records. I see no harm in asking them for help once again and I'm sure Karen would love to see the records.

    I'm pretty sure I can figure out the outcome of the case just by looking at the facts. Angelina likely won because Foley lost control of his car and struck the house, causing injury to the people inside. And it wasn't a light tap, either. He drove through the house!

    The circumstances of the accident weren't clear in the article. Was Foley drunk? What time was the accident? Were there streetlights? There are so many questions. I suppose it doesn't matter. Foley was clearly at fault as it was his car that struck Angie's home and he was behind the wheel.

    It's hard to say what the outcome of the case is as I don't have the actual documents with me. I can say that it seems very likely that Foley is at fault here. This isn't me trying to side with anyone. The guy drove into a house and there are still questions that need to be answered. Was he drunk? Did he have malicious intent? What was going on here?

    Until I email the courthouse, I won't have any conclusion to what is obviously a cliffhanger. Obviously Angie went on to have a great life and I'm sure she talked about the incident until her dying day. Then again her own granddaughter Karen had no idea this incident happened! She might have blocked it from her mind because it was so traumatic for her. Who can say? None of us were there. So, at best I can say I'm sorry the incident happened and that Foley likely went bankrupt at the worst possible time.

    In any event, the scales of justice once again appeared in my family tree. The winner of the case remains unknown until I fill out a form. I might do that after I publish this blog post. I really want to know what happened and I haven't been able to find a follow-up in the Boston Globe archive. Time to start digging!

See ya next time!