On Private Parking Control, with Special Reference to the Right to Charge Penalty Fees without Statutory Support
Abstract
Private parking control – i.e., the charging of parking penalty fees by private companies instead of the police and local authorities – is a new and controversial phenomenon in Finland. Presently, there is no specific legislation concerning private parking control. According to parking control companies, the fees they charge for unauthorized parking are legally acceptable as contractual penalties. In this article, the contracts on which such penalties are based are referred to as parking contracts.
Parking contracts typically involve situations where the contracting parties (the person parking his or her vehicle, on the one hand, and the parking control company, on the other) do not come into direct contact with each other at the time when the contract is entered into. Standardized terms and conditions are essential to such tacit contracts: in particular, the terms of a parking contract need to be available in advance if they are to be considered legally binding.
The controversy surrounding private parking control in Finland can be traced to the question of whether parking contracts are unconstitutional or otherwise illegal. In the only court case involving private parking control, a judgment was delivered by the Vantaa District Court in December 2007. The court held that a parking contract was to be declared null and void because it overlapped the jurisdiction of governmental parking control. The judgment has been appealed and was pending at the Helsinki Court of Appeal at the time of writing. The reasoning behind the judgment was premised on the observation that the jurisdiction of governmental parking control extends to privately owned areas under Finnish law. Thus, the Vantaa District Court reached the conclusion that the private parking fee in question was analogous to a governmental parking fine which can only be levied by governmental
authorities.
In this article, it is argued that the court’s reasoning is indefensible, as the analogy has problematic consequences. Moreover, parking contracts can be considered analogous to arrangements where parking is subject to a charge – the legality of which is not in question. In the near term, the legality of private parking fees will be determined by the outcome of the aforementioned court case. Ultimately, the future of private parking control depends on legislative actions.
