A federal class-action lawsuit filed Thursday in St. Louis concerns more than 150 cars towed from private residential properties in University City.
Attorneys say most of the vehicles swept up were targeted for lack of proper licensing or expired plates — not visible structural damage or anything posing an actual safety hazard.
The Lawsuit's Allegations
Missouri law does provide a path: under state statute, a vehicle owner has the right to request a hearing to contest whether a tow was proper or legally justified in the first place.
The lawsuit further claims University City gave its police officers unbridled discretion to tow vehicles as city leaders ramped up code surveillance in certain areas, and that policymakers knew or should have known problems with the towing scheme existed yet failed to change course. The federal complaint argues this amounts to unreasonable, warrantless seizures and searches that violated residents' property rights and due process protections.
A Pattern That Predates This Lawsuit
The Post-Dispatch reports that a similar lawsuit in Calverton Park ended in a settlement.
Jamie Kopf and Josh Winstral, who have lived in their 110-year-old colonial-style University City home — complete with a vintage 1970s pinball machine and a working Wurlitzer jukebox — for more than a decade, are also referenced in the Post-Dispatch's reporting on the broader pattern of towing complaints in the city. The suit is a proposed class action over vehicles towed from private property.
The nonprofit law firm that filed the case, ArchCity Defenders, says it has separately heard from a University City resident, Keyanna Dorsey, who claims the city directed Hartmann's Towing to pull two of her vehicles straight from her driveway — and that after six months, the cost to get them back topped $8,000. The group says it has represented thousands of residents in disputes with local governments and law enforcement since 2009.
Complaints Stretch Beyond One City
ArchCity Defenders says residents in Hazelwood and Calverton Park have also reported similar towing practices to the organization. In Calverton Park, the group filed a 2023 lawsuit on behalf of five residents — Christina Reise, Sharon Jones, Alan Miller, Jessica Smith and Michael White — over private-property tows. In one case detailed by FOX2Now, Reise's car was towed from her own driveway after her temporary tag had expired two months earlier, and she ended up owing nearly $1,000 to the tow yard on top of roughly $2,000 in state taxes and a $336 abatement fee. Calverton Park has towed 81 vehicles out of 350 recorded violations since December 2020, the station reported, and a code-enforcement lieutenant there said residents are given 10 days to remove a vehicle or request a hearing before the city acts.
Attorneys with ArchCity Defenders argue illegal tows are a growing problem across St. Louis County tied to municipal revenue, though that characterization carries lower confidence in available reporting. The nonprofit's own figures show a steep decline in municipal court collections regionwide — St. Louis City and County courts took in roughly $61 million in fines and fees in 2013, about 46% of Missouri's statewide total, a figure that fell to about $17.8 million by 2024, which the group says is 71% less than a decade earlier.
What University City's Code Actually Requires
University City's own towing ordinance, available through eCode360, lays out when police may authorize removing a vehicle from a highway: the waiting period is 24 hours on certain state highways and 10 hours on other highways. Its safety-hazard provisions apply in specified circumstances, including when a violation of law occurs where signs are posted or a violation causes a hazard. Property owners themselves can request a tow without police involvement, but only after notifying police and waiting 10 hours on owner-occupied residential property with four or fewer units, or 96 hours on other private property. State law also requires posted signage disclosing maximum towing and storage fees and requires towing companies to report unauthorized removals to police within 24 hours, or two hours if the tow came from a signed lot.
Separately, Missouri statute requires tow reports to be delivered to police within two hours for signed locations or 24 hours otherwise, according to the Missouri Revisor of Statutes.
