Don’t know about where you live, but in Florida the presumption in court is that the tow company is wrong, and towing laws are fairly restrictive here (must be a tow-away zone sign with the tow company’s contact info posted within 300 feet of the parking spot, for one thing).
o·ver·night (vr-nt)
adj.
- Lasting for, extending over, or remaining during a night: an overnight trip; an overnight guest.
adv. (vr-nt)
- During or for the length of the night: Let the meat marinate overnight.
overnight
Adverb
- during the night
Adjective
- done in, occurring in, or lasting the night: the army has ordered an overnight curfew
- staying for one night: overnight guests
Adj. 1. overnight - lasting, open, or operating through the whole night; “a nightlong vigil”; “an all-night drugstore”; “an overnight trip”
all-night, nightlong
Adv. 1. overnight - during or for the length of one night; “the fish marinates overnight”
The property owner can use some of these definitions, but so can you. the fact that there are multiple possible and conflicting definitions makes the sign overly vague and unenforceable (argument). The lot is held open to the public, and how are you supposed to know the lot owner’s secret definition of overnight? It’s up to the judge to decide, not the owner.
For all you know, the judge might be pissed off and may imagine himself or herself in your shoes. The fact that private parties towed your car and not the police or a public entity probably helps your sympathy factor.
Another story, to show how much latitude tow companies have. I found a parking spot on the street in Richmond VA. Last spot on the block. I had a dread of being towed there and always checked for signs. There were none and the whole street was full - looks safe. When I came back my car was gone, so I assumed it was stolen, which was very unlikely considering the state of my car. I reported to the campus police who suggested I call the towing company who, of course, had my car. I went back to the street, still full of cars and took pictures of the absences of signs (which is hard to do!). In the end I went to court over the towing charge and accompanying parking ticket - the judge said: “I’ve seen a hundred of these already, just pay the ticket.” and that was that. Got to pay all the money and waste a day.
Urban business. Two hours street parking. The parking that’s technically “their” parking is two blocks away and unsafe. And also extremely difficult to get a big van into. I don’t want him parking at “his business”.
I just don’t think they should be allowed to tow you without adequate signage that specifies under what cirucmstances they tow. “2 Hour Parking, Violators Will Be Towed” and there’s a sign at each entrance? Fine. Fair.
Here in NC some cities have specific laws for tow companies that do include requirements for signs and also contact phone numbers. And I believe they are required to accept credit cards too in some cities because not everyone has cash on them.
If they could could be challenged in SCC for towing at midnight, wouldn’t somebody have already done it?
Maybe somebody has won, but it isn’t like the tow company is going to put that in the Yellow Pages ad.
Also, cash only. Because everybody has $120 on them at all times. Plus you get stranded in a sometimes scary-ass part of town in the middle of the night, of course. WTF?
I completely empathize, and I’m all about working the system to get you (the little guy) a break, but it ain’t likely to happen. Nobody ever feels that they were towed justifiably, and the impound people are good at either ignoring you or dispensing the same vitriol you send their way.
I think your BF should borrow the money to get his car - nothing good can happen to his car in the tow lot - and figure out a better parking situation. (Little 5 parking sucks, I know - I used to live on Clifton Road.) I just don’t think there’s much you can do, and on the level where you might be able to do something - it’s going to cost you a lot more than $130 in time and effort.
But (based on your description) he’s routinely parking on private property and probably not in compliance with the intended purpose of that parking lot (which no doubt is to allow customers to patronize the mini-mall stores). Why shouldn’t the burden fall on him to check the precise nature of the overnight parking ban?
It’s more or less normal for owners to control the use of property they own. One possible interpretation of “No overnight parking” is that any parking that doesn’t actually last the entire night is fine. Another is “Please don’t use this private lot during nighttime hours when the stores (that pay for it) aren’t open.” Since it’s their lot, it’s understandable that their interpretation prevails.
I am a partial owner of a commercial building in an area of town with extremely limited parking. If I knew someone who was not an employee or a customer during working hours, I’d tow your car away in a heartbeat. Your boyfriend is taking up apparently highly valuable parking space at a business he isn’t patronizing at the time. I have no sympathy for his situation. Two blocks? Heaven forbid.
Look, without knowing the area you’ll just have to take my word for it when I tell you it’s not like that.
On the flip side of this, what’s to stop a lot owner from exercising his “right to refuse service” to people, like any other business open to the public? As long as the owner does not violate some kind of anti-discrimination law, couldn’t that owner just say you’re not welcome on his property any more, declare you a trespasser immediately, and start towing, sign or no sign?
Depending on state and local law I assume an owner could tow your car 1 minute after you park it. I have seen signs that say “parking only for customers of X business” If they see you park and not enter that business, you can be towed right away. I have heard of it happening here locally.
There’s someone I’d like to buy a beer.
I haven’t gone for this specific issue, but Small Claims court is perfect for these types of issues. Worst case, you will be out some nominal court costs. Many small-claims judges are very anti-predatory and they are essentially there to protect the little guy. I’d bet on your odds of either winning or arbitrating down to a cheaper settlement.
Not after it’d already been towed, no.
There was one time, a few years back, a friend and I went to comedy club on Sunset Blvd. After it closed, we were walking back to my car, which was parked on Sunset, a few blocks down. As we got a block or so from my car, she said to me, “Is that your car being towed?”. Sure enough, it was. We raced the rest of the way to my car, which had already been hooked up to the tow truck and pulled out halfway. Turns out they tow after I think 1 or 2am there. It’s printed very inconspicuously on the meters.
I caught up to the guy, and asked him what it would take for him to just put my car down and let me go. He asked how much money I had on me. I had $65. By a staggering coincidence, that was exactly how much he needed to unhook my car. And I was happy to pay it, because I know it would have been a lot worse if we’d lingered in the club for even a few minutes longer.
A tow company would be stupid to accept credit cards. Then all you’d have to do is charge it, then dispute the charge or call in your credit card as stolen.
Even if you dispute a charge and the towing company wins, it still costs them money. For instance, when I worked at a hotel, if someone disputed a charge the bank that handled our credit cards (in this case Bank of America) charged $15.00 per dispute. Even if we proved it was legit and won, it STILL cost the hotel $15.00.
If I was the OP, I would go to whoever owns the lot and work out some sort of payment agreement where he could pay the owner and park there legally from now on. They could give him a sticker for his car or something, and he could expense the parking fee for his business.
It won’t help with the current problem but it may help for the future.
I’ve heard very few stories of anyone beating a tow because most of the time the tow companies are in the legal right.
Furthermore I find the “criminal” characterization in Sailboat’s post to be a bit off. A tow truck driver isn’t towing you as some sort of act of law enforcement, he is just exercising (as a third party) a property owner’s right to remove unwanted objects from their private property.
In all of the residential properties we own that have parking the tenants have a responsibility to display their parking tags and if the lot is one in which we issue guest tags their guests have a responsibility to display those. Otherwise the towing company we contract with will most definitely tow these vehicles–I have no interest in people parking in a parking lot taking up spaces from my paying tenants.
There’s definitely a chance that people who “should” be able to park there get towed–our manager has gotten many angry phone calls in which a tenant says we towed their friend’s car. However it is always explained very carefully both in person and in writing what the regulations are for their respective lots–some lots are so small we can’t offer guest tags and even on our biggest lots we only issue one guest tag per unit. Some people like to throw parties and have 5-6 guests park in tenant parking which isn’t fair to the other tenants. Some people have friends over and forget to tell them they need to hang guest tags–that’s the problem of the tenant and one that the tenant’s friend should be angry at them for, our position is we’re trying to provide parking lot access to our customers who are supposed to be able to park there and letting random people with no tags park in the lots gets in the way of that.
However I have heard of someone beating a tow and it was a case of a predatory towing company. A local Methodist church has a very large parking lot and to make extra money they sell parking passes; because of the church’s location it is a good spot for local business owners and employees to park when they drive in to work.
However the church does not have a contract or an agreement with any local towing companies. If the pastor or the maintenance man sees a car without a parking permit parked there they will call and have it towed but they do not have a tow company coming by on a set interval to check their lot. Obviously the parking lot also has clear signage saying that parking is “unrestricted” any time there are church hours–the church does not wants its congregation to have to get parking permits to park there for church and this doesn’t really infringe on the paid permit holders because they are primarily only parking there during business hours.
Anyway, I’m personal friends with the pastor and he told me that his trouble with a predatory towing company started when he was walking an elderly woman out to her car after she had stayed 3-4 hours after church services working on something for the church. Her car was gone and after calling around it turns out a tow company had towed it on its own initiative–note that this tow company had no agreement with the church and had not been called by anyone who worked or was associated with the church. The pastor got into a huge argument with the towing company but ultimately they wouldn’t budge. Finally the pastor caved and paid for the woman’s towing out of church funds and drove her to the impound lot to retrieve her car.
This happened in similar situations 3-4 more times in the same month. In the final incident the pastor’s car was towed out of the “Minister Only Parking” spot by this same predatory towing company. At this point the pastor was out for blood, and as is common in some relatively small communities religious leaders often have political connections. The pastor had several meetings with the city council (several members of said council were members of his church) as well as with the police department.
One of the city councilman ultimately called the towing company and informed them that the church in question was having video surveillance installed on their parking lot and that the presence of any vehicles from their company on said lot, at any hour of the day, would be considered criminal trespass and that any removal from said lot would be investigated by the police as auto theft.
The pastor pursued his personal case through the local courts for some months and eventually won and under some sort of legal rule relating to these matters he was awarded something like 4x damages (so around $1200 from the towing company.)