Chicago vehicle owners whose cars were towed under the city’s abandoned-vehicle program between 2017 and recent years can file claims for payments of up to $1,250 under a settlement tied to two federal lawsuits. The deadline to submit a claim is August 12. The agreement resolves Santiago v. City of Chicago (19-CV-04652) and Fitzgibbons v. City of Chicago (22-CV-05827), which alleged the city routinely failed to give drivers proper notice before and after towing their vehicles.
Due-process failures in Chicago’s towing program
The settlement stems from years of litigation over how Chicago handled its abandoned-vehicle process. Under city procedures, a vehicle flagged as abandoned was supposed to receive a sticker notice affixed to the car before removal. After towing, the city was also required to send post-tow notices to the registered owner. The federal appellate opinion in Santiago v. City of Chicago, No. 20-3522, laid out how these notice steps worked on paper and examined whether the city actually followed them in practice.
The core allegation across both lawsuits was straightforward: Chicago towed cars without giving owners a meaningful chance to respond. Drivers often discovered their vehicles were gone only after the fact, sometimes facing storage fees and fines that compounded daily. The failure was not a one-off clerical error but a recurring pattern, according to the claims brought by the named plaintiffs.
In court filings, the plaintiffs described a system in which vehicles were tagged as abandoned even when they were in active use, and then towed with little or no effective warning. Owners who did not receive timely notice could not contest the designation, retrieve personal property, or move their cars before fees escalated. Some lost vehicles entirely when they were sold or scrapped after accumulating charges they never had a fair chance to challenge…