PORTSMOUTH
Antoinette Bowser didn't need to be told she failed her driving test.
She had just started it when she backed into a parked car in the lot of the Department of Motor Vehicles.
It could have been one of those mortifying moments that one laughs about much later. But for Bowser, it has become the driving-test nightmare without end.
Two years later, the Portsmouth woman learned that the state is coming after her for $75,000 to cover the costs of medical expenses and lost wages for the DMV employee who was in the vehicle administering the test for her.
That examiner is one of about 70 Virginia DMV employees who have filed workers' compensation claims because of road test accidents since January 2007, according to Melanie Stokes, a department spokeswoman.
The attorney general's office did not have information on the number of lawsuits related to such accidents. David Clementson, a spokesman for the office, declined to comment on the suit against Bowser.
In the lawsuit, the state says Bowser hit the car with such "force and violence" that the employee, Geralynn P. Banks, suffered "great pain of body and mind." Reached by phone Tuesday, Banks declined to comment.
Bowser recalls the incident as a fender-bender.
"I know I walked away. And I know she walked away," she said.
She thought it was over.
Bowser, a single mother, said she was shocked when she discovered she was being sued. "I was in tears," she said. "I don't have $75,000 laying around. I'm just making it like everybody else."
Just hiring an attorney was a hardship, she said. She went to Norfolk lawyer Allan Zaleski because his office is close to where she works.
The state is seeking compensation for past and future lost wages and medical bills for Banks. The attorney general's office is asking for attorney's costs and for interest on the $75,000 going back to March 2006, when the accident occurred.
Zaleski said he has yet to receive information about the nature of medical problems and expenses that the state is claiming on behalf of the employee.
Normally, a driver's insurance company would be fighting the suit, he said. But Bowser was driving her boyfriend's car that day and only later learned he did not have insurance.
She never did get her driver's license. She rides two buses to work now.
It has its advantages, she said.
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