Police Officer, Towing Company Are Not Liable For Towing Non-Operating Car Without First Notifying Owner

In Clement v. City of Glendale, (— F.3d —, 2008 WL 638360, C.A.9 (Cal.), March 11, 2008), the United States Court of Appeals considered whether the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution requires a city police officer to provide notice to the owner of a non-operating, illegally parked car before towing it away.
The court ruled that while the government must attempt to notify the owner of the vehicle, the police officer was immune from liability for performing discretionary functions that did not violate a clearly established constitutional right. Similarly, the towing company was not liable because it was acting under the direction of the police.

Facts

Virginia Clement (“Clement”) lived in a residential hotel in Glendale (“City”) and kept her car in the hotel’s parking lot. She had not driven the car for several years and had not kept its registration current. Rather, she filed a “planned non-operation” certificate with the Department of Motor Vehicles, which allows a vehicle owner to avoid paying for registration and insurance so long as the car is not driven on public roads or parked in publicly accessible parking lots. A City police officer, finding the car illegally parked in the hotel’s publicly accessible parking lot, had it towed. He made no attempt to notify Clement first.

Clement sued, claiming that the seizure of her car without prior notice violated her right to due process. The district court granted summary judgment for the officer and the towing company, finding the officer immune from liability and that the towing company was acting in good faith under City authority. Clement appealed.

Decision

The court first concluded that the City was indeed obligated to notify Clement that it intended to tow her illegally parked car because the burden of notifying her would have been minor and no significant government interest was served by not doing so. “Thus, we hold that the government must attempt to notify the owner of a vehicle parked in violation of a valid PNO certificate before the government may tow and impound it,” the court ruled. However, it also found that neither the officer nor the towing company could be held liable for the wrongful tow.

Government officials performing discretionary functions are shielded from liability for civil damages, so long as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights, the court explained. In this case, the towing without notification did not violate such a clearly established right because at the time of the tow, neither the Constitution nor case law had clearly addressed the rights of owners of illegally parked vehicles to be protected against having their cars towed without notification. The towing company had no liability either, the court said, because it acted in good faith at the behest of the police department. The court therefore affirmed the trial court’s granting of summary judgment in favor of the police officer and towing company.

Finally, the court added, although Clement’s due process rights were violated, her seizure claim against the City should not be reinstated because, quoting Miranda v. City of Cornelius, 429 F.3d 858, (9th Cir. 2005), the government may seize a vehicle if “the driver is unable to remove the vehicle from a public location without continuing its illegal operation.”