Utah booting company sues BYU Provo student for $500K

PROVO, Utah (KSL.com) — What started as a boot on a parked car has ended in a $500,000 lawsuit against Brigham Young University student Carl Prince.

The boot and tow

It began mid-September 2017 when Prince found a boot on his car, which was parked in an area that his Provo apartment complex, Park Plaza, later said was designated to make room for the recycling truck that came each week, according to court documents.

Feeling pressed for time, Prince left the boot but came back later to find the car had been towed by University Parking Enforcement (UPE) — a private company in Provo that contracts with housing complexes to patrol parking but has no affiliation with BYU.

Prince then went to UPE’s facilities to retrieve his car. While there, Prince asked a UPE employee to show him video evidence to explain why his car was booted and towed. When the employee refused to do so, Prince called a police officer, he said.

The police officer told the employee that he was under no obligation to show Prince the evidence, according to UPE’s attorney Justin Heideman. Prince paid to retrieve his car, then wrote a letter to UPE, informing management about what had happened.

UPE responded to Prince with its own letter, acknowledging that the employee was in the wrong for not showing Prince video evidence and refunded the student the money he had paid for the tow.

UPE’s president even reached out to Prince later, seeking to “hear any suggestions on what you think we could be doing better,” according to emails provided to KSL.com by Heideman.

But Prince was unsatisfied with the result.

“I’ve heard too many stories of other people who have not been so lucky in getting their money back,” he said. “I just felt something needed to be done and that they needed to be held accountable.”

So Prince took the parking enforcement company to small claims court where he sued UPE for not providing him with evidence and for towing him illegally. The court sided with him on the first count, but said UPE had the right to tow him from the spot in which he was parked.

Prince claims, however, that several cars were booted in that area because it was easy to mistake for a spot since there was no sign and no diagonal white lines indicating that it was illegal to park there.

In an email provided to KSL.com by Heideman, Park Plaza told Prince that the area where he had been parked was not a spot, that they had asked UPE to patrol there to make room for the recycling truck and added that they thought it was “ridiculous to take UPE to court for following our requests.”

Prince decided to appeal the court’s decision, however, and won again — though he was only awarded $2, plus costs.

According to Heideman, the judge found “no bad faith conduct on the part of UPE” since the company claims they were asked to patrol that spot, but that Prince shouldn’t have been towed because there was no sign in front of the parking spot.

With his claims finally validated, Prince thought it was all over. Until recently.

The lawsuit

Near the end of May, UPE filed a lawsuit against Prince, suing him for $500,000 — $250,000 for defamation and $250,000 for intentional interference with economic relations.

The lawsuit claims that Prince defamed UPE by posting a GoFundMe account to raise money for his appeal that accused the parking enforcement company of “predatory” or “illegal” towing practices, unlawfully booting and towing his vehicle, refusing to release his vehicle once it was impounded, towing cars for profit and taking advantage of their position of authority.

Prince said he stands by those claims, especially after the appeal ruling.

The lawsuit also alleges that Prince claimed “hundreds” of people in Provo could attest on yelp.com and the Better Business Bureau that UPE had crossed the line of illegal conduct.

“This statement was knowingly false, as the two hyperlinks included in (Prince’s) statement direct to the Better Business Bureau’s website for UPE, which contained only four total customer complaints and assigned UPE an overall score of an ‘A,’ and to a yelp.com page for UPE which only had a total of 19 reviews,” court documents read.

Prince, however, said that he never linked to the BBB (though he did leave a bad review), but instead included a link to a Google search for “university parking enforcement provo.”

The lawsuit also accuses Prince, however, of “impairing UPE’s ability to obtain and fulfill contracts with existing and prospective clients … and (causing) lost profits, harm to its reputation and emotional distress.”

The company also claims Prince impugned UPE’s honesty, reputation and exposed it to public contempt and ridicule, according to court documents.

“He’s followed our employees around and videotaped them while they made their surveillance runs as they perform their lawful contracts,” UPE attorney Heideman said.

Prince denies claims of videotaping employees, saying he’s only once taken a photo of a UPE truck parked across two spots because he thought it was “ironic.”

Prince also said several of the claims in the lawsuit were flat-out false, including the statement that “due to (Prince’s) combative demeanor, a Provo City police officer was summoned” to UPE’s facilities. Prince said he called the officer when the company refused to show him the video evidence.

And though Prince said he feels justified in what he’s done, it’s been scary to navigate the legal system.

“My hope is, I guess, that something gets changed … that will make it easier for people like me to bring up these types of concerns without having to go to court,” he said. “I guess if something good comes out of this I won’t regret it. I don’t know. It’s hard to say if I regret it.”

This article was originally published by KSL.com. It is used here with permission.