Update: Michigan towing company suffers after Facebook controversy

Back in April, 21-year-old Western Michigan University student Justin Kurtz made national news after a local towing company sued him for three quarters of a million dollars because he created a Facebook page exposing their business practices.

Kurtz made the page, “Kalamazoo Residents Against T&J Towing,” after he says his car was wrongfully towed from an apartment complex and he was charged $118 to retrieve it. Kurtz claimed he had a parking permit but whoever towed the car removed it from the windshield before it was towed. The company brought the $750,000 slander and libel suit against Kurtz in April, but the publicity surrounding the action has severely harmed T&J’s business:

Attorney Richard Burnham of Paw Paw, who represents Bird, said his client has done nothing wrong and is the victim of a vicious Internet campaign.

“He has wrongly become a pariah in the eyes of many people in the community,” Burnham said. “He’s lost upwards of 15 accounts because of the hostility this situation has created…”

Suing an angry college student with 11,000 followers is “like dousing dry sticks with kerosene and lighting a match,” Kurtz’s lawyer, Dani Liblang of Birmingham, said last week. Instead, she said, Bird should have apologized to Kurtz, refunded his money and asked him to remove the Facebook page.

Today, Kurtz’s page has well over 11,000 followers and the Better Business Bureau commented to Freep.com about T&J’s ratings and consumer satisfaction:

It said the company’s file “contains a pattern of complaints in which consumers allege the company towed vehicles in error when either the vehicle had the required parking pass, or the vehicle was not parked in a designated no parking area.

“In addition, there is also a pattern of complaints alleging that the company only accepts cash as a payment method, but refuses to provide change if the consumer does not have the exact amount,” the BBB said.

Kurtz, who works as a store clerk for $8.50 an hour, is countersuing the company for violating his free speech rights as well as Michigan’s Consumer Protection Act.