A victory worth reporting: the Kiel Regional Court has, at our motion, issued a preliminary injunction against a local towing company that had been abusing the system in a particularly creative way.
What happened
Our client — a motorist with no connection to the city of Kiel — parked his car one summer evening on what appeared to be a public car park. He returned to find his car gone. A hand-written note on a nearby post informed him that his vehicle had been towed, along with a Kiel phone number.
What followed was a textbook case. The alleged private site marking was, in our view, invisible at the point where the car had stood; it was placed deliberately in a spot where drivers pulling in were unlikely to see it. The towing company had, by its own admission, observed the car park from a discreet distance and towed the moment our client had left the car.
The lever
Private towing in Germany is lawful — but only as the removal of a disturbance of possession pursuant to Section 859 of the German Civil Code (BGB). That means the site owner can instruct a towing company to remove a vehicle parked without permission. The key question then is: how much is the towing worth? The Federal Court of Justice has given a clear answer. Only the costs genuinely incurred for removing the disturbance may be charged. Anything more is a claim without a legal basis.
The towing companies that specialise in private car parks tend to stretch this limit — sometimes subtly, sometimes boldly. In our case the bill contained, besides the cost of the actual tow, items such as "accident-risk surcharge", "weekend service", "administrative flat-rate" — the kind of position papers that add up to a total vastly exceeding the courts' case law on reasonable towing fees.
Why a preliminary injunction
Our client needed his car back immediately. A full lawsuit takes months. In that case we used the preliminary injunction under sections 935 et seq. of the Code of Civil Procedure (ZPO): the court issues a temporary decision to protect the claimant against an imminent disadvantage, provided both the underlying claim and the urgency are credible.
We argued — successfully — that the towing company was making the return of the vehicle conditional on payment of obviously excessive fees and that this amounted to a disturbance of possession of the car, which could not be cured by a later refund. Case law supported us: a towing company that holds a car against payment of an inflated bill forces the motorist into a kind of private lien for which there is no legal basis.
Result
The court issued the injunction within 48 hours. The towing company had to hand over the car against payment of the fees that the case law actually permits — a small fraction of the original bill. The remaining amounts have to be litigated in the main proceedings, with the towing company bearing the burden of proving that they were reasonable. We are confident about that as well.
What the case teaches
First: a private tow is not automatically legal just because the site claims to be private. The marking must be visible, the parking must be plainly forbidden, and the towing must be proportionate.
Second: even if the tow is lawful, the bill must stay within what the courts have long considered reasonable — typically a few hundred euros, not a four-digit figure.
Third: the preliminary injunction is the right tool when the car is being held as a kind of leverage. Do not wait for the main proceedings. Do not pay the full amount "to avoid trouble". Do not sign releases that waive your right to be refunded.
Practical advice
If your car has been towed from a supposedly private site:
Photograph the site immediately: signage, exact position of the car, surrounding markings.
Ask the towing company, in writing, for an itemised bill broken down by every charge.
Do not pay the full amount at once; pay what the case law permits under reservation, and have a lawyer review the rest.
Keep all documents, including text messages and voice messages — in our Kiel case those were a substantial part of the evidence.
And, as always: act quickly. Case law protects you, but only if you actually use the instruments it provides.