Class Action Lawsuit Accuses Parking Companies of Capturing License Plates to Harvest DMV Records

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A proposed class action lawsuit alleges Premium Parking Service and Municipal Parking Services secretly employ license plate recognition technology to capture the license plates of vehicles at Premium’s lots for the purpose of allowing GovCIO, LLC to illegally obtain names and addresses from consumers’ protected DMV records, all to send “threatening” parking violation notices.

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Specifically, the 36-page lawsuit claims that defendants Premium Parking Service, Municipal Parking Services (MPS), GovCIO and LOB, Inc., have violated the federal Driver’s Privacy Protection Act (DPPA) by acquiring, using and disclosing non-public driver information to send letters demanding sums of money well above initial parking costs. 

The case adds that the parking tickets and late notices, sent by LOB on behalf of Premium, GovCIO and MPS, include threats to boot and/or tow consumers’ vehicles or send the purported parking bills to collection agencies if drivers do not immediately pay the exorbitant fines and fees.

“In doing so, Defendants each willfully and recklessly disregarded the privacy protections afforded by the DPPA to harass, threaten, and intimidate Plaintiffs and Class Members into paying inflated amounts of money for trivial, alleged parking violations,” the class action lawsuit summarizes.

The privacy lawsuit states that Premium Parking Service contracts with MPS to provide license plate recognition technology to capture vehicle license plate numbers and record how long a vehicle is parked. Per the case, if a driver fails to pay the parking fee, MPS then transmits their license plate information to GovCIO, which submits a “DMV Lookup” search to data brokers who have access to state Departments of Motor Vehicles (DMV) registration databases to obtain non-public motor vehicle records—including operator permits, vehicle titles, registrations, or IDs—for information such as names and addresses.

Once obtained, private information is then transmitted to LOB, a third-party mailing service, to send surprise tickets, citations, invoices or late notices for “arbitrary” amounts to drivers to pay before a certain date to avoid additional unidentified penalties, the complaint relays. Notably, the lawsuit says the “exorbitant” fees are often double, triple, or even quadruple the cost of the original unpaid parking fee, and notices threaten that unpaid fees will result in the vehicle being towed or booted.

The case says the parking scheme orchestrated by Premium, MPS, GovCIO and LOB violates the DPPA, under which the use of private information from motor vehicle records must be covered by one of 14 exceptions, none of which apply to the defendants’ use of the data, or must be authorized via express consent from the driver, which proposed class members did not provide.

Importantly, parking lots operated by MPS are poorly marked, with no entrance gates, physical barriers or parking attendants to indicate that a lot is private, and many drivers simply do not realize that the lots are managed and monitored, the case contends. Indeed, signage concerning parking fees and payment is only “sporadically” posted at the edges of Premium parking lots, the lawsuit says.

The case says the scheme is designed to confuse and deceive consumers by extracting more revenue from them in addition to any alleged unpaid parking fees. Moreover, Premium and MPS “do not shy away” from the fact that they use DMV records, with Premium’s own website making reference to its use of “DMV-lookup solutions.”

“The purpose of [defendant’s] automated enforcement system is simple: decrease overhead and increase profits for MPS and its clients, but to do so it must violate each individual’s DPPA-protected right to privacy,” the lawsuit stresses.

The Premium Parking Service class action lawsuit looks to cover all individuals in the United States who had their names and address information obtained from state motor vehicle records and used or disclosed by the defendants.

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