North Dakota Towing and Impound Rights: $50 Daily Storage Cap and the 12-Hour Notice Rule

A tow from a private lot in North Dakota is lawful only when the vehicle fits the statutory definition of abandoned and only when the right person asks for it. Section 23.1-15-01 defines an abandoned motor vehicle as one that has sat more than forty-eight hours on public property illegally, or is missing parts essential to mechanical functioning such as the motor, drive train or wheels, or is located on private property without the consent of the person in control of the property, or is inoperable with no substantial potential further use, unless it is kept in an enclosed garage or storage building. Antique automobiles as defined in section 39-04-10.4, parts cars and special interest vehicles are excluded from the definition, and a special interest vehicle means one at least twenty years old that has not been altered from original manufacturer specifications and is preserved by a hobbyist. Section 23.1-15-03 then limits who may summon the tow truck: a commercial towing service may remove a vehicle from private property only at the request of an owner, lessee, tenant or occupant of that property.

The twelve-hour notice is the provision that most often decides a dispute. Under section 23.1-15-05(3), a commercial towing service that takes an abandoned vehicle into custody must notify the law enforcement agency with jurisdiction where the vehicle was towed from, within twelve hours after completing the tow, and the notice must carry five items: the license plate number and state of registration, the location the vehicle was towed from, the location it was towed to, the name, address and telephone number of the towing service storing it, and a description including make, model, year and color. Subsection 5 supplies the teeth. A service that violates subsection 3 may not collect a storage fee under section 23.1-15-06 and must return the vehicle to the registered owner at no cost to the owner, lienholder or identifiable secured party. If your car vanished from a lot and the local police or sheriff has no record of it within twelve hours, that failure is worth checking before you pay.

Written notice to you follows on a ten-day clock. Section 23.1-15-05(1) requires the unit of government or the towing service to give notice of the taking within ten days, stating the date and place of the taking, the year, make, model and serial number, where the vehicle is held, the right to reclaim, the fact that failing to reclaim within thirty days is a waiver of all right, title and interest and a consent to disposal, and the end date of that thirty-day window. Notice goes by certified mail, return receipt requested, to the registered owner and all readily identifiable lienholders. Where the owner cannot be determined with reasonable certainty, notice is published once in a newspaper of general circulation in the area where the vehicle was abandoned or posted for at least thirty days on the official website of the unit of government that started the impound.

What you pay to get the car back is partly capped. Section 23.1-15-06 gives the owner, secured party or lienholder thirty days after the notice to reclaim on payment of all towing and storage charges, and subsection 3 caps storage at fifty dollars per day for an abandoned passenger vehicle, pickup, van or truck that does not exceed twenty thousand registered gross weight pounds. Nothing in the chapter caps the hookup fee, the mileage rate, an after-hours release charge or a gate fee, and North Dakota publishes no statewide towing tariff. Subsection 4 preserves any garagekeeper lien, defining a garagekeeper as an operator of a parking place or establishment, a motor vehicle storage facility, or a servicing, repair or maintenance establishment. Chapter 35-14 gives that lienholder a claim for reasonable storage charges, lets the lien survive a voluntary surrender of the vehicle if a statement is filed with the county recorder within sixty days, and under section 35-14-04 lets the storer move the vehicle out of its garage without liability once storage charges have gone unpaid for ten days after they came due. Subsection 5 of section 23.1-15-06 extends the same reclaim rights to emergency towing, defined in section 23.1-15-01 as a tow arising from a crash, a mechanical breakdown on a public roadway, or another emergency requiring removal for public safety with or without the owner's consent.

A low-value vehicle can be crushed without any notice at all. Under section 23.1-15-04, an abandoned vehicle worth no more than one thousand dollars as valued by the party holding it, whose owner and lienholders cannot be identified with reasonable certainty after a search of Department of Transportation records, is immediately eligible for disposal by a permitted scrap iron processor and is not subject to the notice, reclamation or title provisions of the chapter. License plates must be removed and destroyed first, and no storage reimbursement is available for such a vehicle. Above that threshold, section 23.1-15-07 lets a unit of government auction the vehicle after published notice or obtain a Department of Transportation release, lets a towing service obtain a release and take title free of liens without paying motor vehicle excise tax under section 57-40.3-02, and requires any sale surplus to be held ninety days for the owner and then delivered to the state abandoned property administrator under chapter 47-30.2.

1-32-01 carries a maximum of three hundred sixty days imprisonment, a three thousand dollar fine, or both. 1-15-05(5). There is no administrative complaint window at a public service commission for towing rates in North Dakota, so a dispute over an uncapped hookup or mileage charge is a civil matter, brought in the district court or small claims court of the county where the vehicle was towed. 1-15-06 is treated by statute as a waiver of all right, title and interest in the vehicle and as consent to its disposal, so the deadline is not a soft one.

The Department of Environmental Quality administers the chapter and may reimburse a permitted scrap iron processor for towing and up to thirty days of storage on a vehicle whose owner cannot be identified.