Volkswagen sues Revere for letting tow company sell off car the company was still financing

For the second time in four years, a car company has sued Revere for the way the city let a tow company sell off a car without first notifying the car company, which still had a lien on it.

The last time, in a case involving Honda, a federal judge ruled that the practice was unconstitutional. In its own federal suit, filed in US District Court in Boston, Volkswagen makes a similar claim. In addition to Revere, the company is suing the tow company, the man the tow company sold the car to and the Registry of Motor Vehicles, in an effort to get either the car or the money it says it's still owed on it.

At issue is a 2022 Audi whose owner VW says defaulted on his loan payments in August, 2022, less than a month after he bought the car. In September, 2022, Revere Police had Atlantis Towing tow the car off a Revere road. The company then applied for and got a lien on the car from the Registry, which, after the initial owner didn't pay up for the towing and storage, it sold, according to VW's complaint.

Volkswagen says that by failing to notify it the car had been towed and then sold, both the city and Atlantis violated its property and due-process rights. In 2020, a federal judge concluded the state law that lets tow companies sell off cars like Atlantis allegedly did is unconstitutional because it never afforded Honda the right to protest the sale of a car it had a stake in - and ordered Revere to pay Honda the value of the car.

In Volkswagen's case, the company is also going after the person who purchased the car from Atlantis, saying that when it traced the car to him, it demanded he give it up and he refused, and it wants its car back.

Last month, a bank filed a similar suit against Boston and the RMV.