# Theoretical: You park your car legally in front of a neighbor's house and they have your car towed. Any legal remedies? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [December 16, 2025, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theoretical-you-park-your-car-legally-in-front-of-a-neighbors-house-and-they-have-your-car-towed-any-legal-remedies/1025763 "2025-12-16T20:32:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![filmore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7993a0/32.png) [@filmore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/filmore)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2025, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theoretical-you-park-your-car-legally-in-front-of-a-neighbors-house-and-they-have-your-car-towed-any-legal-remedies/1025763/1 "2025-12-16T20:32:45Z")
Imagine a typical suburban neighborhood with city streets. Although it’s legal to park pretty much anywhere, people generally park in their own driveway or in front of their own house. Sometimes people park in front of other people’s houses for whatever reason. If a homeowner decided they didn’t want a random car parked in front of their house, could they have it towed? If they did manage to get it towed, would the owner of the car have any legal remedies against the towing company or homeowner to be compensated for towing costs and other expenses? ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2025, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theoretical-you-park-your-car-legally-in-front-of-a-neighbors-house-and-they-have-your-car-towed-any-legal-remedies/1025763/2 "2025-12-16T20:34:53Z")
> [@filmore](#): > > If a homeowner decided they didn’t want a random car parked in front of their house, could they have it towed? If they did manage to get it towed, would the owner of the car have any legal remedies against the towing company or homeowner to be compensated for towing costs and other expenses? In most jurisdictions- this is a question that has different answers in states, counties and towns- the answer is that no, the tow company can not legally do that. Unless the car was blocking a driveway. and yes, of course they could sue. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2025, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theoretical-you-park-your-car-legally-in-front-of-a-neighbors-house-and-they-have-your-car-towed-any-legal-remedies/1025763/3 "2025-12-16T20:42:10Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Unless the car was blocking a driveway. Even then they’d probably need an order from the police or other authority. ---
**Author:** ![snowthx](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowthx/32/10660_2.png) [@snowthx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snowthx)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2025, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theoretical-you-park-your-car-legally-in-front-of-a-neighbors-house-and-they-have-your-car-towed-any-legal-remedies/1025763/4 "2025-12-16T20:44:06Z")
Additionally, some places have time limits on how long vehicles can be parked on a public street without being moved. It can be reported to Code Enforcement and they will tag it, and if the vehicle does not move in the given amount of time, it can be towed. If the owner comes around it’s between them and the city. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2025, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theoretical-you-park-your-car-legally-in-front-of-a-neighbors-house-and-they-have-your-car-towed-any-legal-remedies/1025763/5 "2025-12-16T20:49:42Z")
> [@snowthx](#): > > Additionally, some places have time limits on how long vehicles can be parked on a public street without being moved. It can be reported to Code Enforcement and they will tag it, and if the vehicle does not move in the given amount of time, it can be towed. Right. Especially with motor homes. But the homeowner whose house the vehicle is in front of does not get the vehicle towed (altho they may make the complaint), the city does. > [@dtilque](#): > > Even then they’d probably need an order from the police or other authority. Depending on jurisdiction. ---
**Author:** ![Jeff\_Lichtman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jeff_lichtman/32/1531_2.png) [@Jeff\_Lichtman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jeff_Lichtman)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2025, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theoretical-you-park-your-car-legally-in-front-of-a-neighbors-house-and-they-have-your-car-towed-any-legal-remedies/1025763/6 "2025-12-16T20:52:25Z")
I’d think the tow company would be more liable than the person who called for the tow. The company is supposed to know when it’s legal to tow a car, and when it’s not. This is clearly a case where it’s illegal. Damages could include towing fees, impound fees, physical damage to the car, and financial loss due to the car not being available (e.g. from losing a day or more of work). I’d expect the case to end up in small claims court. In California, the statutory maximum for an individual in small claims court is $12,500. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2025, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theoretical-you-park-your-car-legally-in-front-of-a-neighbors-house-and-they-have-your-car-towed-any-legal-remedies/1025763/7 "2025-12-16T20:57:33Z")
> [@Jeff\_Lichtman](#): > > I’d think the tow company would be more liable than the person who called for the tow. i did have to sue once. I visited friends in a Mobile Home park, and parked in Visitor parking, but apparently the management had an issue with residents parking there so they had my car towed. I sued in small claims, they paid. ---
**Author:** ![jnglmassiv](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f07891/32.png) [@jnglmassiv](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jnglmassiv)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2025, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theoretical-you-park-your-car-legally-in-front-of-a-neighbors-house-and-they-have-your-car-towed-any-legal-remedies/1025763/8 "2025-12-16T20:58:50Z")
You could probably have the tow truck’s license looked at. It’s regulated in Illinois & probably elsewhere. ---
**Author:** ![don\_t\_ask](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@don\_t\_ask](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/don_t_ask)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2025, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theoretical-you-park-your-car-legally-in-front-of-a-neighbors-house-and-they-have-your-car-towed-any-legal-remedies/1025763/9 "2025-12-16T21:00:50Z")
Brings to mind this swear laden Aussie classic [Keith](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PTvxw4fc9M) My question would be, even if you could get someone to tow the offending vehicle, where would it be towed to? You couldn’t ring up a towing company and ask for it to be towed “somewhere else”. ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2025, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theoretical-you-park-your-car-legally-in-front-of-a-neighbors-house-and-they-have-your-car-towed-any-legal-remedies/1025763/10 "2025-12-16T21:00:52Z")
> [@Jeff\_Lichtman](#): > > The company is supposed to know when it’s legal to tow a car, and when it’s not. This is clearly a case where it’s illegal. > [@DrDeth](#): > > management had an issue with residents parking there so they had my car towed. Did you sue the management company or the tow company? A park’s management actually DOES have the right to request cars be towed from their property, so I wouldn’t immediately hold the tow truck company liable for believing the management. A random neighbor has no such right over street parking (depending on local laws) and the tow guy should know that. ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2025, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theoretical-you-park-your-car-legally-in-front-of-a-neighbors-house-and-they-have-your-car-towed-any-legal-remedies/1025763/11 "2025-12-16T21:13:04Z")
Here’s an article from last year about a company in San Francisco that was repeatedly towing cars illegally. > **[FBI raids SF tow company with history of illegal towing; owners charged with...](https://abc7news.com/post/fbi-raids-san-francisco-tow-company-history-illegal-towing-owners-charged-money-laundering/15161965/)** > > Specialty Towing and its owners have been under fire for months and has been suspected from doing business with the city of San Francisco. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2025, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theoretical-you-park-your-car-legally-in-front-of-a-neighbors-house-and-they-have-your-car-towed-any-legal-remedies/1025763/12 "2025-12-16T21:42:16Z")
> [@don\_t\_ask](#): > > My question would be, even if you could get someone to tow the offending vehicle, where would it be towed to? It would be towed to the holding lot of the towing company. They would then charge the car owner to get their car back, that’s how they get paid. If a home owner wants a car towed somewhere else then they would have to pay the bill. ---
**Author:** ![Topologist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/topologist/32/3208_2.png) [@Topologist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Topologist)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2025, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theoretical-you-park-your-car-legally-in-front-of-a-neighbors-house-and-they-have-your-car-towed-any-legal-remedies/1025763/13 "2025-12-16T21:50:21Z")
> [@Atamasama](#): > > Here’s an article from last year about a company in San Francisco that was repeatedly towing cars illegally. > > [FBI raids San Francisco tow company with history of illegal towing; owners charged with money laundering - ABC7 San Francisco](https://abc7news.com/post/fbi-raids-san-francisco-tow-company-history-illegal-towing-owners-charged-money-laundering/15161965/) Going back further, there were the infamous [Lincoln Park Pirates](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Towing_Service) of folk song fame. On the other side, we once had a large pickup truck left blocking our driveway the morning we were due to leave on a trip. We hadn’t seen it around before and none of the neighbors knew whose it was, so we called the local cops, who called a towing service and had it towed away. Best guess is that it was someone who got drunk at a local establishment and left the vehicle there to sleep it off somewhere. ---
**Author:** ![vbob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/vbob/32/4439_2.png) [@vbob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vbob)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2025, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theoretical-you-park-your-car-legally-in-front-of-a-neighbors-house-and-they-have-your-car-towed-any-legal-remedies/1025763/14 "2025-12-16T22:39:34Z")
> [@dtilque](#): > > Even then they’d probably need an order from the police or other authority. In an earlier millennium, I came out one morning to find an alien vehicle in the end of my driveway - ie, fully on my property and preventing me and other tenants from leaving. I called the police, who came and asked me if I knew the owner [no], and ran the plate [not reported stolen], and told me I could pay a tow company to have it removed - if it had been blocking the sidewalk about 3’ further out the police could have it towed. The officer also told me he had another issue to check on, and would come back in 15 minutes to see if we’d found the owner…wink, wink. Sure enough, 15 minutes later the car had rolled far enough to block the public sidewalk, and the city had it removed. Never did find out who it belonged to, or what they had to pay to have the parking brake cable reattached… ---
**Author:** ![OldOlds](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/a3d4f5/32.png) [@OldOlds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OldOlds)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2025, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theoretical-you-park-your-car-legally-in-front-of-a-neighbors-house-and-they-have-your-car-towed-any-legal-remedies/1025763/15 "2025-12-16T22:42:07Z")
Anecdotal, one of the denser suburbs of Boston where not everyone has off street parking. Street parking is allowed. I have off street parking, but occasionally park in the street if (for instance) I have someone coming over like my 82 year old parents and I want to leave them a space in the driveway. I mention this because some neighbors seem to think that if I have off street, I shouldn’t be taking on street spaces. One day I pulled along the curb to park, and we had snow about two days prior. I pulled to the end of the snowbank which marked the opening for the driveway. Parking as close as I could so as to maximize the spaces behind me before the next driveway (ie, you could get two cars there, but not if I parked in the middle) What I didn’t realize was that one of the neighbors hadn’t cleared his driveway, so I was blocking it. Totally my fault, and had he asked I would have moved in an instant. He did not ask. He called the police, demanding that I be towed. The cop knocked on my door and asked if I would move the car, all the while the neighbor is saying he wants me towed. I did, and the cop actually said to the other guy “You know, if you had cleared your driveway and sidewalk I bet this wouldn’t have happened” I did not tell the cop that’s why I did it- he just figured it out. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2025, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theoretical-you-park-your-car-legally-in-front-of-a-neighbors-house-and-they-have-your-car-towed-any-legal-remedies/1025763/16 "2025-12-16T22:55:21Z")
I used to run a condo building. There is quite a process to hire a tow company and post signs and create the list of people authorized to call the tow company to tow a car. Once all that is in place _then_ we could have cars towed off our private property lot. Some homeowner exerting possessiveness about the public curb in front of their house? They’re not able to legally tow anything. Could they maybe find a crooked towing company? Maybe. Not the way to bet. Could they bribe a policeman to order the car towed? Maybe. But not the way to bet. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2025, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theoretical-you-park-your-car-legally-in-front-of-a-neighbors-house-and-they-have-your-car-towed-any-legal-remedies/1025763/17 "2025-12-17T01:16:48Z")
> [@Cheesesteak](#): > > Did you sue the management company Management company, and they paid upon receipt of the suit. > [@Atamasama](#): > > Here’s an article from last year about a company in San Francisco that was repeatedly towing cars illegally. Yeah, that sort of thing is endemic there. There is a tiny short street near the Embarcadero, with 2 handicapped and a couple metered. “NO Stopping” at 3Pm for some unknown reason, and at 250, several tow trucks are lined up, usually to two away the two cars in the blue zones. ---
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2025, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theoretical-you-park-your-car-legally-in-front-of-a-neighbors-house-and-they-have-your-car-towed-any-legal-remedies/1025763/18 "2025-12-17T02:15:24Z")
Sorta off topic, but a couple of years ago my wife woke in the middle of the night, happened to look out the window and saw a strange car parked in our driveway. Long story short, it turned out to have been stolen, and the driver/thief was trying to break into homes in the neighborhood. But we asked one of the cops how we were gonna get the car out of the driveway, and he just said, “Oh, we’ll have it towed.” But not at all what the OP asked about. ---
**Author:** ![Spiderman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spiderman/32/230_2.png) [@Spiderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spiderman)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2025, 2:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theoretical-you-park-your-car-legally-in-front-of-a-neighbors-house-and-they-have-your-car-towed-any-legal-remedies/1025763/19 "2025-12-17T02:36:01Z")
> [@don\_t\_ask](#): > > My question would be, even if you could get someone to tow the offending vehicle, where would it be towed to? Philadelphia has/had a [Courtesy Towing](https://www.cbsnews.com/philadelphia/news/courtesy-tows-investigation-philadelphia-ppa-police/) program - if you were legally parked but they needed the street for repairs or a movie shoot or such then they would courtesy tow your car ‘around the corner’. The towing companies were _supposed_ to let the PPD know where it was towed from & to; however, that rarely happened. People would come out / home to find their car gone & report it stolen. Sometimes they were towed to places that people couldn’t stay - no parking after \_\_\_, another residential zone outside their own permit etc. so the owner would then get a ticket, or worse, _really_ towed despite having legally parked their car. ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2025, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theoretical-you-park-your-car-legally-in-front-of-a-neighbors-house-and-they-have-your-car-towed-any-legal-remedies/1025763/20 "2025-12-17T03:08:22Z")
I’m a project manager for public water and sewer utility projects. With the municipality’s permission, our contractors will put traffic cones out that have “NO PARKING” signs on them in the area where they will be working the next day. Just last week, some brilliant person actually moved one of the cones onto the sidewalk and parked their car right where our contractor needed to work the next day. We knocked on all of the doors in the vicinity, but nobody knew whose car it was. So we asked our private duty traffic control police officer to call the towing company they use and have it towed. This actually happens fairly often. When we pave a street from curb to curb, we of course need every single car off the street. In this case in addition to the cones and “NO PARKING” signs we first distribute paper flyers to every house on the block a week in advance. And inevitably still typically end up having to tow several cars. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theoretical-you-park-your-car-legally-in-front-of-a-neighbors-house-and-they-have-your-car-towed-any-legal-remedies/1025763.md?page=2)