Returned from month in India, apartment towed car, auctioned and sold it. What to do?

In My Humble Opinion
21

Is that correct?
Everytime I’ve rented an apartment in a building with attached parking, a clause in the lease gave them the right to require you to move your car for repairs, maintenance, even standard things like snowplowing or sweeping the lot, provided they gave 24 hours notice. Which they always did by posting a notice in the mail room, in each elevator, and putting a notice on the windshield of each car in the affected lot.

(However, our complex was nicer – cars left unmoved and in the way were towed to the far lot, out in back about 2 blocks away from the front door, and just left there.)

22

I read the lease myself, and nothing mentioned about right to tow, or make you move your car if you’re legally parked, but IANAL.

23

Does it contain a generic clause saying 'Building Rules are hereby incorporated as part of this lease" or “Tenant must obey posted rules in the building”?

That’s pretty common, otherwise everybody would have to sign a new lease anytime the building rules are changed.

24

Yeah, there’s a good chance there was some sort of clause like this, but even if that were true, that doesn’t give them the right to have it towed away and then sold. They’d have the right to move the car for necessary work, but they’d likely also have a duty of care to not damage the car, and not lose it.

25

He should call his insurance agent and explain the situation. The adjuster isn’t going to care but the agent might.

26

I don’t see how this sale would be legally binding it would still be your friend’s car. Didn’t the OP say the friend was still making payments? I thought you have to have the title to legally transfer a car that way, or at least a lienholder’s release, something like that.

27

Glad your friend will see a happy resolution to this, but since this place is what it is…

“Lawyer up” means “plead the 5th”. It’s used when a suspect decides to stop talking to the police. Your fried is just hiring a lawyer. :wink:

28

He should lawyer up, but he should also pore over his lease agreement very closely, and insist that his lawyer do so as well.

I’d be willing to bet that somewhere in there, there is verbage concerning cars, parking and the moving/towing/auctioning of said vehicles, and that the apartment complex and towing company are probably just barely within the letter of that agreement.

And John Mace, I always understood the term to mean that you were no longer going to answer any questions yourself, and were going to engage the services of an attorney to act on your behalf. So in a civil sense, “lawyering up” means that you’re no longer going to attempt non-legal solutions to the issue, and are engaging lawyers to either sue or defend against a suit.

29

Wow, it appears that Washington statehas a very short timeline for an “abandoned” vehicle to be sold for storage costs - 15 days after notification. The sections that may be most relevant to this case are:

I’m not saying no wrong was done, but it appears any wrongdoing would be on the part of the landlord, depending on the definition of some of the terms above.

30

I ain’t no lawyer, but it seems to me that the most important fact in this story is that the landlord knew the renter was still using his apt and was in contact with the renter who planned to continue renting it. Therefore the landlord knew the contact details of the renter, and should have notified him of the car stituation.
Once towed, I suppose the county has the right to sell it after 15 days. But the landlord should be held responsible for calling the tow truck, and telling the tow truck driver to take the car to the county lot for abandoned vehicles, and not, say, to a private storage site.

Good luck, and I hope you already have a lawyer.

31

It wasn’t abandoned. Somewhere between the landlord and the towing company the vital piece of information about the car being temporarily in the way of a project didn’t get communicated.

I guess, at the pound, all the vehicles were assumed to be of the same status - they weren’t and the onus is on the landlord to take care of the property on behalf of the owner.

The landlord failed in this regard - could even be simple Negligence as the landlord had a duty of care to the car owner.

ETA: Alternatively, the landlord did communicate clearly and reasonably all facts to the towing company and the towing company screwed up.

32

I’ll tell you what I would do…

I assume he still has a set of keys around somewhere…

:wink:

33

Did your friend notify the building manager or landlord prior to leaving for a month that he would be gone from x date to y date and that his vehicle would be left in the parking lot during that time?

34

Yeah, it looks like the towing company has acted legally. So the issue will come down to the landlord’s behavior. Under Washington state law or common law, did the landlord have any responsibility to tell the towing company this was a tenant’s car? I cannot see how they don’t have some responsibility. When you move into most apartments they ask you to give your license plate number, so the land lord should’ve known that this car belonged to a tenant. If that is the case I would think they have a duty to convey to the impound lot it is a tenant car (not an “abandoned vehicle”), the land lord still had a right to tow the car, and isn’t on the hook for the impound fees so wasn’t required to “bail it out” and move it back afterward.

But given the land lord had knowledge (that was either not conveyed due to not giving a fuck or them not checking what cars were towed versus what cars were registered to tenants) this was a tenant car I suspect either by statute or common law there may be some expectation of care toward tenant’s property, and allowing it to be impounded as an “abandoned vehicle” would likely violate that. Once it was instead impounded but with the owner known, the landlord likely should’ve indicated they’d work to get the tenant to deal with their car, and thus the lot should hold it for longer (and accumulate more fees, obviously.)

Anyway, every attorney I’ve ever worked with you can call and get a consultation over the phone or in person for free. They will closely guard giving free legal advice (though nicer ones sometimes slip a little out), but they can give your friend a clear understanding of their legal situation, tell them their options for payment of attorneys fees and etc. That’s really the only option here.

35

It also sounds like the friend had spoken with building management indicating he’d be out of the country. Hopefully he also provided some form of contact? India does have internet access these days so he should’ve had access to email. If he did and they didn’t even try to contact him I think that could imply failure in their duties toward him as a tenant, too.

I do think it’s unlikely that he has a claim against his comprehensive policy. It honestly isn’t considered a stolen vehicle under the letter of the law, and the police won’t even issue a report to that effect, so I doubt the insurance is on the hook.

36

See post 8; the tenant was negotiating a lease renewal via email from India and mentioned something about being overseas.

(On the other hand, whatever happens now, I’m not sure I’d want to remain a tenant.)

37

I also think the timing of this is pretty shit. Like for something that would require clearing all cars out of the parking lot, you shouldn’t give such short turnaround notice. Something like a resurfacing or repaving you generally schedule with the company doing the work a few months in advance. And you give tenants wide notice. I’m familiar with rental townhomes that give a 3-4 week notice of when your scheduled annual chimney sweep is, and that’s for a very non-invasive process that just requires letting someone into the unit for a 20 minutes or so. It sounds like at most they could’ve given the tenants two weeks notice (since for the impound lot to have it for 15 days, they’d have had to tow it only a little after 2 weeks into this guy’s trip.) That just isn’t very good landlord behavior, regardless of where the law comes down on it.

38

Would “a note on the door” be a legally sufficient means of notification? There are many ways for the owner to not see the note–out of town, wind blows it away, someone else takes it down, etc.

39

Despite the small print in their lease or other documents the apartment complex must have some reasonable responsibility for cars left on their property. Unfortunately it may come down to a judge making the decision in this one. I do think what makes sense is for the apartment complex to take responsibility, he paid his rent which included the use of the lot, and they’d need some very specific language in the lease to avoid the responsibility of caring for that car. I’d say they should have paid for the towing and storage fees for the time the lot needed to be clear, not report the car as abandoned or illegally parked. Unfortunately for this guy, I didn’t write the laws and I won’t be the judge in his case.

40

I don’t think the landlord should have to pay the towing/storage fees out of pocket, per se. I’ll say I work at / have an ownership stake in a real estate firm (we only have one residential property and it’s not really our specialty, more a remnant of old business from long ago) and while I don’t have much residential tenant experience I can understand that if you own the lot you need to maintain it. Lots need resealed/surfaced, sometimes repaved. If a tenant just doesn’t move their car, what do you do? You do need to tow.

I’m not sure if there is any legal requirement as to how much notice is given, I suspect most places would allow you to manage that as a matter of building rules. But just as a matter of being a good land lord my feel is you need to make notice for a full lot closure pretty damn far in advance. Especially for stuff like paving/resurfacing that legit will be scheduled a few months in advance. This isn’t emergency work we’re talking about.

If you think about most tenants, a lot of them may not have an easy to find place to store their car for a day. You should give them time to find a solution, and even offer them alternative parking arrangements if they come to you with it. This quick notice then tow I find problematic from a behavioral perspective.

I think the “correct” land lord behavior would’ve been:

A (really nice guy): Tow it and impound it, then have it brought back, pay the towing/impound fees but bill them to the tenant. The issue here is some tenants are dicks, and will refuse to pay, and collecting on that would be a bitch.

B (meeting your obligations guy): Tow it and impound it, but tell the impound lot that it’s a tenant’s car and to hold it until you can find the tenant and make them aware it’s impounded. This would at least get the lot to hold it out past 15 days. Part of the problem here is it sounds like the land lord just washed their hands of it after they had it towed, never followed up with the tenant, even had ongoing communications with the tenant and their staff apparently weren’t cross-knowledgeable that a tenant they’re talking to currently via email has had their car towed. Now I can understand not every employee is going to know every thing. But come on, at least have a policy in place–you know whose car was towed because you required him to give you his license plate when he moved in, you have his email address because you’ve been emailing with him. Make it standard that you try to contact your tenants by more than a fucking physical note, when something like this happens.

I hope that for this guy’s sake the landlord, under the laws of the State of Washington has violated his duties as a land lord and thus the tenant will be able to recover the cost of the car from the land lord, but it’s definitely a scary/unfortunate thing that I think could well come down to being a gray area, and like Tripolar said, may come down to what a judge feels that day.