RCC WESLEY CHAPEL CROSSING, LLC v. ALLEN

A man whose car was booted in a DeKalb County shopping center parking lot after he parked there sued the property owner and nearby businesses on behalf of himself and everyone else who had paid a fee to get a boot removed from their vehicle since 2013. A trial court in Clayton County certified the lawsuit as a class action, reasoning that booting a car and demanding payment amounts to placing an illegal lien on it because no law authorizes such liens. The Court of Appeals of Georgia agreed there was no common-law right to boot vehicles. The property owners argued old common-law rules letting landowners remove or impound trespassing property, including a doctrine used for stray livestock, gave them the right to boot cars. The Supreme Court of Georgia disagreed, finding neither rule supports immobilizing vehicles. But because the trial court and Court of Appeals used a mistaken reason (that liens can never exist without a statute) to support class certification, the high court sent the case back for the class certification question to be reconsidered under the correct legal reasoning.

The court held that no common-law right allows private property owners to immobilize unauthorized vehicles: the doctrine covering removal of trespassing property does not extend to immobilization, and the old rule for impounding trespassing livestock does not apply to cars, whose owners are easily identified and which suffer no comparable actual damage.

The ruling means Georgia parking lot owners and companies that boot cars cannot rely on old common-law property rules to justify charging removal fees, leaving them dependent on statutes like the towing law. It also affects thousands of drivers who paid boot-removal fees and are pursuing the class action.

Judgment vacated and case remanded to Court of Appeals

1. The court examined whether the common-law right to remove trespassing property, recognized in an earlier Georgia case (Reinertsen v. Porter), covers immobilizing vehicles, and concluded it does not because booting a car perpetuates the trespass rather than removing the trespassing item.
2. The court then considered the doctrine of 'distress damage feasant,' an old common-law rule letting landowners impound trespassing livestock as security until the owner pays for actual damage caused, and found no authority extending this livestock-specific doctrine to automobiles.
3. The court noted that even if the doctrine could apply to vehicles, it requires proof of actual damage, and the record showed the booting fee here was a flat deterrent fine rather than compensation for any real harm to the property.
4. The court observed that Georgia's towing statute (O.C.G.A. § 44-1-13) already provides a specific legal process for removing and impounding trespassing vehicles, which has displaced any broader common-law self-help remedy in this area.
5. Turning to class certification, the court found the trial court's reasoning, that booting fees are an illegal 'lien' because liens require a statute, was legally incorrect since distress damage feasant itself is a common-law lien, even though it does not apply to vehicles here.
6. Because the lower courts' certification decision rested partly on that flawed reasoning about liens, the Supreme Court of Georgia vacated the judgment and sent the case back so the trial court can reconsider whether the proposed class still meets the legal requirements using the correct reasoning.

• vehicle booting
• parking lot immobilization
• class action certification
• common-law property rights
• DeKalb County parking dispute