It was fitting that we learned last Friday of a lawsuit filed by a former drunken driver against Washington’s Pend Oreille County.

On the day that a young North Idaho family was being buried in Sandpoint after being killed by an alleged drunken driver, the story about Ashlen Lee’s suit was on the front page. She blames a Pend Oreille County deputy for abetting her serious 2002 vehicle accident because during a traffic stop an hour earlier he didn’t detain her and another underage girl for drinking. She and her Spokane attorney contend the deputy’s inaction is worth $1.5 million. The critically injured passenger in the vehicle reportedly has received a substantial settlement from Pend Oreille County.

Rather than play the blame game, Lee should consider herself lucky that she’s not locked away like Luke A. Peterson, 26, of Naples, Idaho, facing a life sentence on three counts of vehicular manslaughter and one count of aggravated DUI for allegedly being drunk on July 29 when his car crossed the centerline and killed three people in another vehicle: Bart Bartron, 24, Tabitha C. Saunders, 21, and their 2-year-old daughter, Kjestine Saunders. Two-month-old survivor Lyssa Saunders suffered seven skull fractures and faces a life without her parents and sister. Peterson, meanwhile, faces bail of $1 million and the possibility of a squandered life.

Litigant Lee should get a life. Rather than try to cash in on temporary misjudgment on the part of a busy deputy, she should take personal responsibility for the scars she now bares on her body and her soul. Society’s tired of the blame game.

“We didn’t give her the booze. Her parents gave her the car,” Pend Oreille County Sheriff Jerry Weeks told The Spokesman-Review. “When does the blame stop?”

As a 17-year-old in 2002, Lee was fully aware that she had no business possessing alcohol, let alone drinking and driving.

On the morning of the accident, Lee and 18-year-old Shaleena Threlkeld were stopped by an unnamed deputy who noticed they’d been drinking and weren’t wearing their seat belts, according to the newspaper report. The deputy had just dealt with a loud party in which he’d arrested a youth on an outstanding warrant, who then tried to kick out the patrol car’s back windows. Maybe the deputy was distracted by single-handedly trying to keep the peace. Later, he was disciplined for mishandling the traffic stop, and, according to Sheriff Weeks, has had the crash on his conscience since.

In defending Lee, her attorney, W. Russell Van Camp, used such legal buzzwords as “reckless endangerment of the public” and “egregious and unfortunate negligence.” He should have used others to describe this case: “chutzpah,” which means “shameless audacity,” and “consequences,” which means “the relation of effect to cause.” Lee, not the deputy, drove through the stop sign with a blood-alcohol level of .11 percent, causing the awful accident that disfigured her.

She should be ashamed she’s part of a wretched band of DUI drivers who have injured or killed – not blame someone else for her own terrible judgment.