It quickly becomes a criminal matter if a car is being towed illegally however. AKA Grand theft auto.
That depends. A licensed towing operator is usually immune from criminal prosecution for towing a vehicle, but can be sued. YJMV, etc.
That again depends on the jurisdiction and the circumstances. Obviously a licensed towing operation can be charged with criminal conduct if they blatantly steal cars at random; organized criminal rings do this all the time. It’s also one of the reasons that many jurisdictions have enacted laws requiring posting of towing information and requiring private property owners of public lots to post information regarding parking rules and vehicle recovery.
Repo drivers are required to carry papers from the bank showing ownership; and those guys often calls the cops to let them know they are going to tow. Guys with tow trucks can and have been known to be a pain the backside for a reason, but they don’t go around opening themselves up to legal problems just for the fun of it. When they hook you up they usually feel that they have a pretty good case for doing so; even if in your eyes it’s a criminal act.
I don’t know the laws, but I do know impound lots; and I think this short video pretty much accurately describes all of them. 
- So what? Boytyperanma is right. He might fight and win the case in court on the issue of the phone number on the sign. But… this is how it will work: the company will tow the car, they will hold it until he pays up. He can take the owner and the towing company to small claims court (assuming the debt is low enough to qualify by the time it reaches court). The decision may be based on the issue of the sign, if that is the local law in BC or Nanaimo, or it may not. Or… the judge may look at the case, ask “did you park where you were told not to?” and judge the case on that. You were illegally parked since you were forbidden to park there, phone number on license is irrelevant to the key issue - were you legitimately towed for being improperly parked?
He should then look at the timeline backlog for getting to small claims court. First, you can’t unless there’s a debt - so he’ll have to pay to get his car out. If he lets it fester in impound too long, the judge may say “OK, sign was in error, but I’m only giving you 2 days of impound fees because the car could have been recovered any time. The next 3 months are all your fault.” Search for Duty to Mitigate .
the police are not going to jump in and liberate his car because it’s been “stolen”. If it’s an argument over the legitimacy of a sign, they it’s a civil matter. If it’s a licensed towing company asked by the property owner, it’s a civil matter.
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I agree - how does he know? Why would this matter? The towing company is essentially paid the moment they hook up the car. (Unless he actually wins in small claims court). “Once they got the car, you gots to pay” is the rule of thumb, or “might makes right”. BTW, sitting in the car once hooked up to prevent it being towed will net you an obstruction of justice charge, from what I’ve read. As others have said, do you think the tow truck driver hasn’t heard every threat, bluster, legal argument, and stupid argument (or a combination of all) a thousand times? Same with the impound guy. they make it impossible to get a car out without paying. People have already tried every tactic and they are locked and safety-glassed to the hilt to stop them.
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RIP.
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Totally irrelevant. This is what I call Judge Judy Logic. “He owed me for the dent in my car so I am justified in breaking into his home to take his big-screen TV”. The law doesn’t work like that. how safe your parking lot is - totally irrelevant to your small claims court case. the only issue would be - was the car legally towed, at the request of the property owner or his agent?
In fact his logic hurts his case. Worker’s Safety isues are not a trump card to be pulled out at critical times like a “Get Out Of Jail Free” card. The moment he pulls that, the judge, immediately after calling it irrelevant, might actually take the time set him straight - “What did you do to correct the situation?” Called the WCB? No. Complained to his employer, supervisor, or workplace safety rep? No. Did you complain to them when told to park there? No. So he did nothing about it. (a) then it wasn’t that serious, since he’s done nothing to get the situation changed, and (b) the employer can’t address what they haven’t been told about so until he complains to the manager, it’s not a relevant fact in “can I park elsewhere instead?”. It is not an automatic exemption when committing serial insubordination.
Most Canadian provinces have Worker Safety legislation that bars the employer from penalizing you for refusing unsafe work conditions. However, the counterpoint is that the employee must immediately inform the employer of the unsafe condition. Where possible (i.e. unsafe tripping hazard, improperly stacked material) if they can safely do so, they should proceed to correct the situation.
What happens if one liberates their own car? If you smash a lock and knock down a fence to retrieve your car and are charged with Destruction of Property, is it a defense that you honestly believed you were acting in defense against criminals who had stolen your car?
Fortunately, I have no experience here, but I’ve always assumed that towing companies are paid nothing by the owner of the lots they service, and that the entire benefit to the towing company came from payments from the owners of the cars that were towed. (With the possible exception of towing on the behalf of police in some circumstances.) Anyone know firsthand?
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They sign contracts to be the exclusive tow company for private lots and with city goverments. It’s all about being the low bid and then making a profit off of the sheep. When I lived in Dayton Ohio the tow company Busy Bee was the object of much scorn and lively tales of rough encounters. Yeah, this kid is fool to want to mess with a tow company when they have the landlords permission to take action.
OK, but do you know this? What is the payment, and who pays whom? Does the lot owner pay the towing company a yearly fee? Does the lot owner get a kickback for each vehicle towed? Maybe a combination of those?
See, if they’re just going to put a ticket under the windshield wiper, that’s one thing. You can always appeal that after the fact, with no harm done if you prevail. In the story you tell here, she could have argued that they just swapped cars. TPTB might have been willing to dismiss the ticket, or not, depending on what level of jackassery they chose to perform.
Towing a car, on the spot without notice, is a different kettle of slime. When that happens, the damage is done. Any appeal after the fact can only devolve to bickering about who has to pay what to whom, but the car owner is left stranded at the time (and possibly with damage to his vehicle).
That’s one of the big problems with excessive towing. If a mal-parked car is creating some immediate nuisance or hazard (blocking a driveway or a fireplug, e.g.), then immediate towing is in order. If it’s just parked in the wrong lot, or the driver backed into the space instead of headed in, or has an expired tag or something petty like that, then towing is an excessive and unjustified response. It’s also outright vigilantism.
The law in California specifies, for example, that is many kinds of cases, a notice must be placed on the vehicle, and it can be towed two or three days later. It used to be a major highway robbery industry to tow vehicles with expired tags (and, as I noted earlier, everyone “knew” that the apartment landlords were getting a piece of the profits); now, there must be several days’ notice posted on the vehicle.
I have a friend who is an apartment manager and she had to deal with this a few years ago; just spoke to her. Due to how the law is in Michigan she could not have two obviously abandoned vehicles towed off the property even after calling the police and reporting them. She had to wait six months after she reported them (after already being there most of a year) because you can have expired plates on private property. They told her that she couldn’t prove that a renter wasn’t storing them there and that her owner needed to add a clause in the lease concerning parking policy.
After consulting the owners lawyer the fix was to add a clause to all upcoming leases and to sign a contract with a local towing company that would post signs and provide 24 hour impound service. The 24 hour part just means that you can call the number and hear a message and leave a recorded bitch session with them. It cost her something like $800 a year to do this, but she figured it was worth it to keep the place from looking like a slum and the right to tow someone after they break the rules and continue to piss her off. The tow company gets a flat $100 for each car they tow and added storage fees.
Its pretty much a for profit scam set up by the locals to genarate profit. The city uses the same company to enforce a no parking ordinance on the streets between 3 and 6 am. If I were to guess the tow company owner is related to someone in the city government or there are kickbacks involved. I also imagine that deals of this sort are a commen and creative way to genarate money in many localities. Hell I wouldn’t be surprised if the tow company purposely left those cars on the property.
Also, the contracted tow company also takes on any liability associated with towing the cars and deflects any criticism people may have away from her. So she does get something for her property owners money.
Two wrongs don’t make a right. You cannot break and enter to retrieve your TV that someone found on the sidewalk, though was abandoned, and took home.
First, the right or wrong of the situation is irrelevant. If the police did not feel it was stolen property, and did not go and seize it back and arrest the tow truck operator then what makes you think the court or the DA/Crown Attorney will see it otherwise after an act of vandalism? It’s a civil matter, solve it in civil court, and actions taken outside of that will be criminal in their own right.
Second - duh, you don’t think a thousand (rightly) towed car owners have thought of and maybe tried the same thing? I would be incredibly surprised if security was lax enough to let you get within 100 feet of the vehicle. Plus, all those cars are there at the lot owner’s liability; they also have to guard against vandals who want to have a random smash-a-thon, or else their insurance would be through the roof.
Finally, if you did get away with it, you’d probably face the tow operator in small claims court anyway, so the whole argument does not go away.
the trouble with tickets is - private operators often are nto allowed to access the license plate database. In some places in Canada at least it is a violation of privacy laws for the government to share registration info with private companies. I understand the case is the opposite in the some states, the information is public. Years ago I got a “ticket” for $50 from a private lot; there was nothing they could do about it, and I just took care not to park that vehicle in a lot owned by them in case they decided to tow.
Not just small claims, Breaking and Entering will get you arrested even if it was just trying to retrieve your own car.
Generally speaking, tow companies are not people you want to screw with. They have many of rights and protections, if you run afoul of one, they probably have a legally defensible position with regards to the towing of your car. Threatening them, breaking into their yard, or otherwise trying to get your car back without paying will more likely land you in jail than any other path.
And storage charges will continue to accrue while you spend the weekend in jail.
Ah yes, the “I am toothless, therefore the world has no teeth” argument.
This boy has some things yet to learn about life.
I used to be a “safety supervisor” in a commonwealth country.
I’m assuming it would be somewhat similar to Canada - it sounds like it here.
When we did a “safety inspection” (which was weekly) there were a number of classifications for hazards, they ranged from “there’s nothing we can do about it so train the staff” through to “fix the problem right now”.
In between was something along the lines of “this is a potential hazard be aware of it”.
Not everything that was identified as a potential hazard had to be fixed right then and there - in the case of a “poorly lit” parking lot for example - if you could list steps that you took to mitigate the danger then you were ok.
What I’m trying to say - something that is identified as “hazardous” didn’t automatically rise to the standard of “employee can refuse to use / do that job”.
I want to know how you feel about the tow truck industry, either good or bad and why.
I’ve never had to learn the specific wording of the law - not my problem. But, as I understand it the rule is the danger has to be real and specific. You can’t refuse work because “it’s cold and wet outside and I might catch a cold”. Same with poor lighting. Unsavory characters hanging around the back parking lot? Call the police, report them for trespassing and if necessary, pay for security patrols. Poor lighting? Not sufficient to warrant refusal to work.
I suppose the ultimate arbiter would either be the union grievance arbitrator, or if not unionized, the judge in a wrongful dismissal case. You refuse to work; they fire you claiming it’s safe. The judge or arbitrator decides if the firing was appropriate or if they owe you back wages. In both cases, if the hazard is questionable then both sides are gambling the will win. If there’s a possibility the employer could lose, the case is not somewhat of a stretch, the employer will be motivated to fix the problem instead. An employee who gets himself fired and loses serves as an example to others.
Yeah, I was thinking about over and above the obvious criminal charges in breaking and entering. You don’t even have to argue about theft or not (retrieving the car) to be convicted of break and enter. Grabbing the car without paying doesn’t relieve you for the obligation to pay. possession may be 9/10 of the law, but the other 1/10 belongs to the court and you can’t ignore it, can’t get away.