What legal authority gives a property owner the right to charge someone towing fees if they park there without authorization? Does this extend to holding onto their car until they pay up, or do they have to release the car and then go after the unauthorized parker in small claims court? And does whatever authority it is extend to someone blocking your driveway or only someone actually parking on your property?
Usually the municipal parking bylaw.
Generally the property owner won’t have the right to charge the fees, though. The impound lot will have the right to require the towing fees be paid before releasing the vehicle.
As for blocking the driveway, check your municipal parking bylaw.
Usually, it is towed to a lot and the owner has to pay before the car is released. As for blocking a driveway, in my city a call to a no-emergency number will dispatch a tow truck. I believe the trucks are contractors who have an incentive to tow because they get paid per car.
The miscreant can’t argue with the property owner or city government, he can try and argue with the tow truck guy, who has his car, and good luck with that.
In before somebody else posts this. Business at this parking lot has slowed way down since the pandemic, but all the earlier schadenfreude is still there to behold:
Everybody towed had to pay $150 to the towing company to get their vehicle back.
This might vary from place to place- but where I live, you can have cars towed both off your property and if they are blocking a driveway. There is a difference in procedure - if someone parks in a private parking lot or drives up my driveway and parks on my property*, I can just call the towing company. If they park on the public street blocking the driveway, I must call the police for the car to be ticketed and I can then call the towing company after it’s ticketed. In either case, it’s not the owner charging the owing fees - the towing company gets paid when the violator shows up to retrieve the car.
- I’ve seen it happen
I am not a lawyer and my understanding may be faulty, but I think where I live it’s either due to local ordinances (if you live in a municipality) or, in unincorporated areas, it’s a subset of trespassing laws.
In my area, the landlord/owner calls a tow truck to remove the offending object, after which the owner gets to argue with the tow company. Or, if things are truly egregious, with the police impoundment.
Again, in my area this extends to someone blocking your driveway. If they are not actually on your property but blocking access to it then the police will take care of the problem for you, and, again, the vehicle owner gets to argue with local law enforcement.
In Michigan a property owner must post a sign telling people that unauthorized cars will be towed and give information on where to pick up the car. They basically have to have a contract with a towing firm. I’ve lived in apartments that did not have these and they had a hell of a time getting abandoned vehicles removed. It took over six months to get two cars removed behind my parking spot (where friends would park).
I assume when you talk about signs, you’re talking about actual parking lots and not that I have to post a sign to get someone towed from the part of a driveway that’s on the same property as my single family house, right?Because otherwise that’s nuts.
Correct, its for apartments and public lots like strip malls. For your single family home its handled as trespassing. You can have it towed off after reporting it as nusance to the police. Apartments have tried this and gotten sued since they didn’t have parking stickers, signs or assigned spots.
I recall (vaguely since it was many years ago) that towing grew to be a seriously predatory industry. I lived in an apartment complex where the management had a contract with a towing company. The tow trucks would show up several nights a week in the middle of the night and they’d always find several cars to tow away (and make a lot of noise in the process too).
Sometime around 2005, the California legislature passed a law severely restricting the predatory towing industry. I don’t remember many details, but the law was several pages long and full of things that tow operators aren’t allowed to do any more.
Hang tight, maybe I’ll be back soon with a link . . .
A DuckDuckGo search for “California towing law” turns up a great many cites. Here is one:
California Towing Laws at Lawzilla – several screens-full of summary information, followed by what appears to be the actual text of the law (which itself is quite lengthy). The gist seems to be that tow operators and property owners and managers (especially commercial places like restaurants and shopping malls, or apartment managers) must comply with a shit-ton of detailed rules, restrictions, and disclosures before they can tow a vehicle.
All this came about because towing had evolved into such an abusive predatory industry, there was enough clamor until these laws were enacted.
Yes, there have been some issues here in NYC with private companies booting cars in parking lots (private parking lots, like outside a fast food place). Then the operator would demand money on the spot to remove the boot.
I’ll see if I can dig up a cite…
I don’t think it’s exactly that they demand the money on the spot , but the law requires a lower fee if the owner pays before the car is actually towed. The fee for a tow is $125 and the fee for unhooking is $62.50
Well, since this is a Chicago-based board, a reference to Steve Goodman and “The Lincoln Park Pirates” is in order
In the late 80s when I lived in Philadelphia, it was cool to be downtown when the clock struck five pm. There was no on-street parking 5-7 to accommodate rush hour.
At around ten till five dozens of tow trucks would appear, staking out spots, racing engines, etc. at 5 they’d begin towing. Shoppers would be running to their cars, but once the truck had a car they wouldn’t let go.
Anyone know if that is still happening?
Which part? If you’ve watched Parking Wars on A&E they certainly have rush hour parking restrictions in Philly, and the tow trucks line up right before they kick in. That happens around me up in Boston when street sweeping starts in the morning. I imagine it happens anywhere a time based parking ban exists.
In general, tow trucks have a “drop fee” once they hook up a car. You can get your car back if you pay that on the spot, but otherwise the car is going to the impound lot. Tow truck drivers are very firm about this.
Cool, thanks! Never heard of the show.
ETA: late 80s a friend’s car was stolen in Philadelphia, later found. I drove him to the impound, but they’d already closed for pickups. We could see his car, it had fancy hubcaps. I took him there the next day. He got his car back, but the hubcaps were gone. . . from the police impound lot.
5-7pm sounds kind of late for evening rush hour parking restrictions. In Cincinnati it’s almost always 4-6pm and 7-9am depending on the street or direction of travel. Many non-downtown streets are only two lanes each way so they have rush hour parking restrictions inbound in the morning and outbound in the evening. A few streets that may have oddball industrial or school-related bursts of traffic are restricted from 3-6pm and 6-9am but those are rare.
I’m assuming there must be some appeal procedure where you can dispute that your car was illegally parked and shouldn’t have been towed. Anyone know any examples of this?