Dowell v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. (2019)
Citation: 269 So. 3d 662 · Court: District Court of Appeal of Florida, First District · Decided: May 2, 2019 · Opinion: Per curiam (Roberts, Ray, and Winsor, JJ.).
Source note (2026-10-18):
- Links on this page to
https://static.case.law/so3d/269/cases/0662-01.jsonare an (unofficial Caselaw Access Project copy, retrieved before 2026-10-18; host disallows automated access); no official or otherwise permitted full-text copy was located on 2026-10-18.
Case page. Legal information, not legal advice. Last verified: 2026-10-17.
Independent source check (2026-10-17): the court’s five-page opinion was retrieved as a Justia-hosted copy, an unofficial host of primary opinion text. The earlier CAP JSON URL below returned HTTP 403 during this pass. No citator check was performed.
Facts
At the request of law enforcement, a towing operator towed a disabled 2011 Jeep Compass from a crash scene on March 15, 2014. Owner name, address, tag and VIN were given to the operator at the scene. The operator mailed a “Notice of Lien and Proposed Sale” on March 28, 2014 (nearly two weeks later), held the public sale on April 21, 2014 as the only bidder, and obtained a Florida certificate of title. According to the complaint as described in the opinion, the insurer (State Farm) later obtained a Georgia salvage title for the same vehicle; this was not an independent appellate factual finding. The towing operator sued the insurer for conversion and slander of title and, in the alternative, to foreclose its lien. The trial court held the public sale “null and void” for the notice failure and granted summary judgment to the insurer. (Opinion text retrieved from https://static.case.law/so3d/269/cases/0662-01.json on 2026-10-17.)
Holding
Affirmed. The operator conceded it missed the then-applicable deadline in § 713.78(4)(c), Fla. Stat. (2013) — notice within 7 business days after the date of storage. The court held: “he was not entitled to proceed with enforcement of the lien by public sale when the required notice of the lien and public sale was untimely.” Because the sale was invalid, the operator’s ownership-based claims failed.
Reasoning
The operator argued the only sanction for late notice was loss of storage charges under § 713.78(9). The court rejected that reading: “The notice requirements of paragraph (4)(c) are not discretionary; nor are they a technicality. Based on the plain language of the statute, timely notice is mandatory.” Accepting the operator’s position would mean upholding a sale “even if no notice of the sale was provided to the vehicle owner at all,” which “would amount to writing the notice provisions out of the statute.”
Practical impact
- Buyers / operators: a tow-lien sale held after a late notice of lien is vulnerable to being treated as void, and title derived from it can fail against the owner and the insurer even after the State has issued a certificate of title. Compliance with the notice clock is the core diligence item for any § 713.78 purchase. The current statute shortens the clock to 5 business days and requires the notice to be sent by a DHSMV-approved third-party service (§ 713.78(4)(c), (16), 2026 Fla. Stat., retrieved 2026-10-16 from leg.state.fl.us).
- Owners / insurers: a missed notice deadline is a ground to challenge the sale itself, not only the storage charges.
Good-law status
No negative treatment located; no citator was run. The statutory text the court applied has since been amended (ch. 2024-27, Laws of Fla.; current § 713.78(4)(c)).
Applies in →
florida, towing-storage-and-mechanics-lien-sales, motor-vehicles
Legal information, not legal advice. Verify against the current primary source before relying on this summary.
Independent Primary-Text Comparison — 2026-10-17
Present 2024-27 mailed/publication and model-year clocks are different; no automatic present-day result for every defect. Current operative comparison: § 713.78. Full holding verification is not a comprehensive still-good-law certificate. Where the former source URL failed, the working full-opinion source now appears in metadata; original failed receipts remain separate in the review evidence.
Legal information, not legal advice. Verify against the cited primary sources and consult a licensed Florida attorney before acting.