The Towing Laws - By Category

This page is our effort to group (almost) all the laws that you can reasonably use to support your case in a lawsuit against a towing company. The majority of these laws and regulations explicitly lay out conditions that tow truck operators and towing companies MUST fulfill in order to legally tow your car, store your car, charge you for its return, and sometimes, sell your car. As I'll explain as well, ANY failure to abide ANY of the applicable laws when towing or causing the removal of a vehicle may entitle you, as a matter of law, to have all towing and storage charges waived.

Generally, we can group laws and regulations by their source or by the subject matter they cover. Importantly, we can also group them by location--the places where they apply--but on this website, all the laws discussed apply to towing in California, unless we explicitly state otherwise. Furthermore, certain laws and regulations, only apply to certain areas within California. This is usually fairly obvious, but it can be confusing at times.

For example, in the LA area, there are very important distinctions between laws and regulations that apply in the City of Los Angeles versus the County of Los Angeles. Most importantly, the Los Angeles Municipal Code (LAMC) and Los Angeles Police Commission Rules and Official Police Garage Regulations ONLY apply in the City of Los Angeles, not in other cities in Los Angeles County (e.g. Pasadena, Long Beach, Glendale, and others) or other unincorporated parts of Los Angeles County. A good clue of whether it is LA City or not is to note whether law enforcement is the LAPD or if it's either the Sheriff's Department or a different city police department (e.g. Azusa Police Department). Here is a map of what is City of LA and what is Unincorporated County or other city.