I live in an apartment complex in Portland, OR. I have two cars, one is always parked in a parking spaced assigned to me. The second one is parked in a space available to everyone. The apartments do not use parking stickers/identifiers, however license plates of both of my cars are listed in the rental agreement.
In the past 3.5 months I did not need use my secondary car. I only occasionally run the engine to make sure that the battery is not drained. It was parked in a spot where I can easily see it from my apartment window, therefore I could see that there is no problem with it like flat tires etc without actually being in very close proximity.
Since the car was staying in the same spot for a long time, the manager of the aprtment thought that the car might be abandoned and posted a tow warning sign on the windshiled, which was displayed there for several weeks. Unfortunately, I did not run the engine during that period and I could not see the post without getting close. As a result the car was towed after a while. I always assumed that the manager can easily reach the license plate information I provided and can contact me about any problem. I was not really worried about my car getting towed because I did not move it.
I talked to manager and told her the license plate was listed on file and asked her why did she not attempt to personally contact me by phone or sending a letter. Her answer was that she did not know I was the owner because their software is not "sophisticated enough" to store both license plates; she could only pull the primary car information for each tenant. Checking the secondary car license plate information would require going through all files and she would not do that. Since she could not identify the owner, she posted the warning sign on the car and claimed no other responsibility.
I have read the related section of Oregon residential tenant landlord act. It indeed says an abandoned vehicle can be removed by the landlord by posting a sign 72 hrs prior to towing. Now I have the following questions:
- How one can decide a vehicle is abandoned? My car had a valid license plate and a valid registration sticker. Tires were inflated. Only, it had a damage from a slow speed crash on front left side.
- Does the manager have a responsibility to check against the license plate information provided in the rental agreement to see if the owner is a tenant of the apartment, and if so, personally contact the tenant before posting a tow warning sign? I did not see anything in Oregon law regarding this. Is "not so sophisticated computer program" defense by the manager really good enough?

