Cedar Towing is sued over fees

A Ramsey County man is suing Cedar Towing & Auction after he said the tow operator overcharged him and forced him to pay in cash, both in violation of city ordinance.

The lawsuit accusing Cedar Towing of fraud and deceptive business practices comes in the midst of a police investigation of the company, the city's largest tow operator.

The lawsuit in Hennepin County District Court, which seeks class-action status, describes how Wayne Spar parked his car Sept. 18 in a shopping center lot on LaSalle Avenue north of Groveland Avenue.

According to the complaint, after several hours, Spar saw a Cedar Towing truck near his car.

He asked if he could move the car before being towed. The driver demanded $100 cash, the complaint said. Spar said he could get the money from his friend's house, but the driver said he couldn't wait.

When Spar went to get his car at the Cedar Towing lot, he was charged "more than the maximum allowed for a tow by the Minneapolis Code of Ordinances in order to retrieve his vehicle" and was told to pay cash, when city ordinance allows payment by credit cards, check and money orders, the complaint said.

"Getting your car towed is a huge hassle," said Michelle Drake, Spar's attorney, in a statement.

No comment

A representative of Cedar Towing would not comment Thursday, but the company posted a statement on its Facebook page in November, the same day the Star Tribune reported the police investigation: "We make every effort to follow the Minneapolis City Ordinances & Minnesota State Statutes. Several years ago the towing industry in Minneapolis was regulated by a price cap, due to a mis-reading of the City Ordinance, we may have inadvertently charged excess storage for vehicles towed from the City of Minneapolis."

In 2008, the city passed an ordinance limiting the fees that towing companies may charge. After adjustment for inflation, the service fee for the towing is now capped at $212 and the daily storage fee is capped at $28, according to the complaint. Towing companies may start charging storage fees the day after a vehicle is towed.

According to a police search warrant, the city's licensing department conducted a spot inspection of Cedar Towing's impound lot in August and found that it had charged vehicle owners with a storage fee on the day the vehicles were towed, a violation of the ordinance.

In the Facebook statement, Cedar Towing wrote: "In our defense if the City Licensing Inspector thought we were doing something wrong he should have notified us at once telling us to cease whatever action we were doing."