Joe Nagy Towing, Inc. v. Lawless (2012)
Citation: 101 So. 3d 868 · Court: District Court of Appeal of Florida, Second District · Decided: October 12, 2012 · Opinion: Khouzam, J. (Altenbernd and Kelly, JJ., concurring).
Source note (2026-10-18):
- Links on this page to
https://static.case.law/so3d/101/cases/0868-02.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 sixteen-page opinion was retrieved through an unofficial Justia-hosted PDF copy. Its limited preemption holding, not a rule immunizing all conversion claims from preemption, controls this summary. The historical CAP URL below was not used for this independent check; no citator was run.
Facts
A towing company towed the owner’s truck from a convenience-store lot in June 2006. The owner called and said he intended to retrieve it; he was then jailed on an unrelated matter. Three successive attorneys called the company repeatedly, identified themselves, explained the owner’s incarceration and offered to pay all towing and storage charges; none was told of the scheduled auction or given retrieval instructions. The company’s principal testified he followed the lien notice requirements “of section 713.585” by mailing to the last-known address and running a newspaper ad. At the auction — where, he testified, outsiders had appeared “maybe two” times in ten years — he bought the truck himself for USD 1,636 (the towing and storage charges) and resold it for about USD 18,000. The trial court found conversion. (Opinion text retrieved from https://static.case.law/so3d/101/cases/0868-02.json on 2026-10-17.)
Holding
Affirmed on all issues. The court wrote on one: the federal motor-carrier preemption clause, 49 U.S.C. § 14501(c)(1), does not preempt a common-law conversion claim against a towing company where the claim attacks not the tow or its price but the company’s refusal to release the vehicle “despite multiple reasonable requests.”
Reasoning
Conversion is a general, industry-neutral common-law rule whose connection to motor-carrier prices, routes or services is “too ‘tenuous, remote, or peripheral’ to require preemption” under Morales and Rowe. The court limited its holding: conversion claims “are not automatically preempted by virtue of the fact that the defendant is a towing company.” A footnote describes the trial court as holding that “literal compliance with the lien notice requirements … is insufficient to protect a lienor from a later tort action for conversion when the vehicle’s owner has affirmatively and repeatedly contacted the lienor.”
Practical impact
- Buyers / operators: paper compliance with the statutory notice steps does not immunize a lienor who ignores an owner’s documented attempts to pay and retrieve; a lienor who buys at its own thinly attended sale and resells at market value is exposed to conversion damages. A downstream buyer should ask whether the owner contacted the lienor before the sale.
- Owners: documented, repeated offers to pay before the sale support a conversion claim even where notices were mailed.
- Statutory context today: current § 713.78(6) requires public sale “for cash” with notice posted 20 days ahead on an approved third-party service’s public website, and § 713.78(10) requires inspection and release within 1 hour during normal business hours at the storage site for an eligible claimant presenting the listed documents, with a rental-agreement exception for release of the rental vehicle itself (2026 Fla. Stat., retrieved 2026-10-16).
Good-law status
No negative treatment located; no citator was run.
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
The claim attacked subsequent refusal/disposition, not tow/price/service; the opinion expressly limits its preemption holding. Later Dan’s City separately confirms the transportation-of-property limitation for post-tow disposal; no purchaser-title holding or current notice clock is inferred. 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.