Illegal Repo Practices

The Washington Post has an interesting piece about the coming of big data to the auto repossession world. But of particular note is the end of the article, wherein the repo man profiled says that he will return ransom the defaulted borrower's personal goods found in the car back to the buyer for a $50 flat fee (with child car seats given back for free). 

That's probably illegal. The auto lender's security interest extends only to the car, not to personalty that happens to be in the car (were it otherwise, it would violate the FTC Credit Practices Rule).  So the repo man, as the lender's agent, holds that personalty in the car as a bailment; there's no security interest interest in it.  The repo man can't simply destroy it or throw it away--that'd be conversion, and ransoming it back would seem to be some flavor of tort, making the repo many vulnerable to a trover action (for value) or replevin action (for the stuff itself), as well as a UDAP violation.

Now it's possible that there's contractual language in the loan agreement authorizing a storage and inventory fee or the like. But auto loan agreements aren't standardized and that language won't be in all agreements, so a blanket policy like the one described in the article surely isn't right.

As it happens state law in a handful of states (Connecticut, Florida, Maine) authorizes repo man storage fees, but I can't find anything like that in the Ohio Revised Code.  So the repo's practice looks like it's illegal to me.  

Whether or not anyone's going to litigate over this is another matter--Ohio's UDAP statute authorizes recovery of attorneys' fees, which changes the economics of litigation, and there are statutory damages of up to $5K, so with 25,500 repos last year alone there might be enough dollars at stake for a class action to make sense here (and the statute of limitations should cover more than that), but only if there's a defendant who can pay the damages.  I doubt the repo company has the assets to do so, but perhaps the lenders are liable for the repo man's actions.  And I suspect there are arbitration clauses on most auto loan agreements, so that will, at the very least, shield the lenders and perhaps also the repo man.