Annie Kuo Becker (AKB): Welcome back to Discovery. I'm your host, Annie Kuo Becker. On this episode, we have a special treat for you listeners. Our guests today are not from a scholarly paper or guest lecture. They are an alumnus, Kevin Eggers, and former client, Amanda Ogle, featured in a movie, Tow, starring Rose Byrne, Octavia Spencer, Demi Lovato, Dominique Sessa and others. The film Tow, in local theaters now, is based on true events, but behind every film adaptation is a real story. So, we're joined by two people at the center of that story. Amanda and Kevin, welcome to the podcast.
Amanda Ogle (AO): Thanks for having us.
Kevin Eggers (KE): Thanks for having us.
AKB: So, your experience navigated a towing dispute here in Seattle, which turned into something much bigger. It raised questions about consumer rights, due process and how ordinary people confront systems that can feel stacked against them. Could you tell us, Amanda, let's start at the beginning, before the film, what actually happened to you back in 2017?
AO: I was couch surfing, and I ran out of couches, basically, and so I started sleeping in my car. And I wasn't able to live with my mom because she was living in a senior housing apartment, but I would occasionally spend a night there. And one night I spent there, and then I woke up the next morning to go to my car, and it was gone.
AKB: However, the car wasn't towed yet. It was actually stolen. Amanda's first call was to the police. She made a request that was almost a foreshadowing of the nightmare to come.
AO: So, I called the police and reported it stolen, and I asked them, “Please, if you find it, do not have it towed because I can't afford it, and I'll just come and get it.” But people who stole my car drove it down south to Tukwila or SeaTac, and they parked it at an apartment building.
AKB: A woman who lived at that building eventually called Lincoln Towing to have the car towed away. This was a nightmare for Amanda, whose car was also her home. To add insult to injury, the towing company made it conveniently inconvenient for her to reclaim the car.
AO: So, I immediately called Lincoln Towing, and they had my car, and they wanted $427 to get it out. And I explained to them that my car was stolen. I'm homeless. You know, I have no way to pay that. And they were just adamant, saying, “No, we need our money.”
And so, they said, “Well, you can come down to our office down south and pick up some paperwork to go to court to contest the tow.” And that's what I did. I took the bus down there, got the paperwork, and a couple days later, they actually called me and said, “Oh, we gave you the wrong paperwork.” And I just said, “You know, you guys have my car. I'm not taking the bus down there again.”
So, I asked them to send it to me at a Fred Meyer in North Seattle, have them fax it to me. So, that's what they did, and I filed the paperwork to go to court.
AKB: At the court hearing, Amanda represented herself and explained to the judge that she was living in her car. Fortunately for Amanda, the judge acknowledged her plight and granted a court order for her to pick up her car for no fees. Amanda had a short celebration, but unfortunately, the good news was short lived.
AO: And I was just so excited, so happy. I literally walked out of the courtroom just jumping up and down. I was just so excited, and I took the bus to my mom's apartment to call them, to let them know, “Hey, you know, just giving you guys a heads up, I'm gonna, you know, I have this court order here in my hand. I'm just letting you know I'm coming to pick up my car.”
And the guy that had answered the telephone typed in my license plate number, and he said, “Oh, that was sold a month ago.” And I'm just like, “What?” I was just so livid at that point, and I'm just like, “You know, someone needs to call me back immediately.” And I would call and call, and no one would call me back. And that's how I found Kevin.
AKB: In the movie, there's a meet-cute in the hallway of the King County Courthouse, and you're at a vending machine, and Kevin has overheard you — according to the fictional storyline in the movie — he's overheard you in line, whereas, you know, you're expressing frustration, pleading with the clerk, “Please, I can't wait months for a hearing. I've got to see a judge,” because you know specifically this ’91 Camry is not just your car. It's your home.
Kevin, that was your first job, right, out of law school, and I understand from the KUOW interview that it was your first case?
KE: Yeah, so, I first took a job — my first job out of law school was at the Northwest Consumer Law Center. And so, I had been working there for about a month, maybe two, and I only officially got my license, maybe even a few weeks prior to Amanda walking in our office.
And so, the difference between the movie and in real life is a little bit different. I don't actually stalk the halls of District Court, popping up on people like that. But yeah, I mean, Amanda had walked into our office, and it was one of the first cases, and it was just a two-attorney shop at the time, so it was myself and my legal director, Amanda Martin.
And, you know, Amanda came in, and she already had a court order in her hand, basically. So, they said, “Well, this will be a great one for a young attorney to get into. She's already done a lot of the work for you. So, maybe let's just send a demand letter and ask them politely for the car back, and let's go from there.”
AKB: It turned into a much longer and more frustrating ordeal. Actually, I wanted to ask you, in the movie, there is an apology about filing papers in District Court rather than Superior Court. Did that happen?
KE: Yeah, to some extent. I mean, it's dramatized in the movie quite a bit.
AKB: Of course it is.
KE: In real life, we definitely did file in District Court. That's really where it should have been. In the movie, they make it a little bit more like, “Oh, should have filed in Superior Court.” And it's really not quite that way, or that simple.
It's really, the case belonged in District Court to begin with, and then ballooned into a case that probably should have found itself in Superior Court, and that would have been the next move. But at this point, it was one of those cases that we didn't realize was going to balloon. Right? This case should have been simple. It shouldn't have been as complex as it was.
And I think, in the District Court, the District Court didn't quite know how to handle it. They thought originally it was a tow hearing, and then it ended up being sort of a small claims, and then it ballooned. Obviously, the amount that ended up being asked for ballooned beyond that, and a major towing company in the area was withholding this car, and so I'm not entirely sure the District Court was equipped to handle it at that point.
AKB: When did you guys realize this was much more complicated?
KE: I think part of it, it was pretty quick, actually. I expected a pretty quick resolution. I mean, at this point, I actually thought reaching out to Lincoln Towing, the tow company, was going to be, “Oh, our bad. It was a mistake,” right? “And we'll work with you quickly to get this done.”
And I was surprised to be met with as much resistance as I did almost immediately. They have an in-house attorney, or someone that they work with specifically on every case. And he was fairly combative. And there were also the hints in the ways that he would talk about Amanda, and start asking, like, “You know, is she really homeless? And how much does someone need for compensation when they're really living in their car?” And asking a lot of pretty insulting questions from the get-go.
And so, then I started to gather, at that point, that this might be a longer battle. I still, at that point, didn't have any idea what it would turn into, but at that point, I started getting that hint that maybe this towing company wouldn't be playing ball.
AKB: Amanda, in the movie, you'd started out by representing yourself and realized it was time to seek legal representation. Did it follow a similar storyline as in the movie?
AO: Actually, I just remembered this. I did talk to another attorney before Kevin, and I remember him saying, “Well, your car isn't worth anything, so you might as well just drop it,” or something like that.
I'm an alcoholic, so I was drinking really heavily, especially after I found out that they had sold my car. This whole thing wouldn't have happened if they would have just said, like Kevin said, “Oh, sorry, we messed up,” and if they would have just bought the car back and just gave it, you know, gave it to me, we wouldn't even be here right now. But they decided to, no, hold my car hostage.
Like I said, I was drinking heavily, and then I was thinking to myself, “Well, do I handle this, you know, still drinking, or should I be sober?” And I decided I was going to be sober. So, right after I spoke with Kevin, I basically told him, “I'm going to rehab for 30 days. Here, it's in your hands right now.”
AKB: Yeah. I mean, thank you, by the way, for sharing. I was really impressed watching the movie that you shared your personal story with the screenwriters. It's a reminder that the law isn't just abstract. It's deeply personal. It affects people's finances, stress levels, their sense of fairness and trust, and because of those details, we get a very, like, multi-layered story with some humor, which I thought was an interesting approach.
Was it surprising that there was a layer of comedy to it, or were you already infused by the ridiculousness of the situation?
AO: No. After Jonathan Keasey read Danny Westneat’s original article in the Seattle Times, he had called Kevin and basically said, “Hey, I'm a screenwriter. I'd like to make this into a movie.” And Kevin called me and told me, and I just laughing hysterically, like, “Yeah, right.”
We met with John, and he was really great at letting us say, “It should be this,” or “This happened,” but there is a lot of artistic license in there, obviously. But I really liked the humor along with it. I thought it was great.
AKB: So, Seattle Times reporter Danny Westneat has since covered this story twice. There was a follow-up piece that published earlier this month, and then there was the original story back in 2017. So, can you take us to how that media placement came about?
KE: It was basically that I had gotten this bill. You know, the opposing party, Lincoln Towing, sent me this message and a little screenshot of their internal system that says that Amanda now owes something like $20,000 or $21,000 for storage fees. And I was sort of flabbergasted by that, and I didn't quite know what to do with that.
It was such an outrageous number that, even legally, I thought I was — I didn't know what to do. So, I asked my legal director. She said, “You know what? Why don't you call one of the attorneys, Julia Kellesen, who works over at Northwest Justice Project, who sort of, as a sister organization, does a lot of these issues. She's been around for a long, long time.”
And we sort of talked about the towing industry in general. And she helped me out quite a bit. She said, “You know what, Kevin, this sounds like a situation that actually might be beneficial if you called the Seattle Times.” She said that maybe it would be beneficial if I reached out to the Seattle Times.
She said, “You know, as lawyers, we have multiple different levers we can pull, and not just the law, when we're advocating for our clients, and this is one that's maybe headline grabbing,” and said, “Danny Westneat has written some columns over the years that have railed against the towing company and asked for reform of the towing industry. He might take your call.”
So, I sent him an email, in the off chance that he would respond. I didn't really expect anything back, but I think it was within a day or something, he responded back and said, “Yes, I would love to meet you and Amanda,” and requested some of the materials that we had filed.
And then he showed up, actually, at the court hearing where Amanda ended up getting her car back. So, he was there that day, basically reporting and seeing what was going on for when he wrote the article. And of course, the article was wonderfully written and was met with a lot of acclaim, and hit the front page of one of the sections of the newspaper.
And from there, it ended up getting a lot of attention. We ended up getting a lot of calls, including the call from Jonathan Keasey, who was the screenwriter, and it just kind of went from there.
AKB: Kevin, can you tell us about some of the lessons that you took away from working with Amanda on this particular consumer protection case that you've since applied to the rest of your career since?
KE: I think the overarching one — and Amanda touched a little bit on this — is, in terms of the movie being made, there's a lot of people like me. There's a lot of public interest attorneys out there who do this kind of work all the time and don't get a movie made about it.
And so, I think this one was a big story, and that's why. But the credit should be given to all of those legal aid, nonprofit, public service attorneys out there who do that. But there's also a lot of people like Amanda, who need the help of those organizations and those attorneys and who don't always get representation, because at the end of the day, there's just not the funding or the resources to provide that representation for everybody.
So, in a lot of ways, a lot of things had to come together and culminate to allow Amanda and I to meet, to go through this case together, and then ultimately have it be turned into a movie. And that's large in part — I don't want to take away from Amanda's story too, because I will say that she often says that she doesn't do anything special.
But I did have a lot of clients, right, that required my help, that didn't fight quite as hard sometimes. Many of them did. Sometimes they would drop off. And that's the second lesson working in legal aid, is that you're not just an attorney. You have to manage a lot of externalities in your cases.
You have to manage relationships and be a little bit more empathetic to people's situations. Like, in this case, Amanda was like, “I'm an alcoholic, and I need to go to rehab, and you won't be able to reach me for a certain period of time,” and me, as an attorney, having to deal with that. Not being able to reach your client if you need to, or being able to say, like, some people don't have phone access at all times, or they don't have a registered address, and some of these things, I'm just not sure all attorneys have to deal with on a regular basis.
And so, being put in the deep end right after law school, the sort of third lesson is just knowing that where the rubber meets the road, where the books kind of meet practice, there is definitely this gap, right, in what they teach you and what actually occurs in practice.
And it's some of the small things, like local rules and what judges want when they have you file paperwork. Some won't accept pleadings if there's a paper clip versus a stapled page, right? And so, some of these things are the things you have to learn in practice that were really, really difficult for me as a young attorney, especially when the stakes are so high for people like Amanda.
And so, I think learning that was a steep curve, but it was one that I also was able to lean on. As I mentioned earlier, I was able to lean on those around me in some of these sister organizations, on my legal director. And there is a community in Seattle and the broader nation around legal aid and public service attorneys that are willing to help.
But I think reaching out to those networks, those other attorneys and asking for that help was really, really important for me to have that mentorship, and then now to provide some of that mentorship along the way.
AKB: Can we have a fun question about the differences between real life and what the movie portrayed? Are there any glaring differences or Hollywood-ized elements that you would point out as, “That didn't actually happen that way, but it's fun”?
AO: Yes. There's one that I tell everyone is my kid Avery is nothing like they are portrayed in the movie. They are the sweetest, nicest. They were not an angsty teen at all. They're just a wonderful human being. There has to be some dynamic, you know.
AKB: Tension.
AO: Tension for the movie. Things like that.
AKB: And they also played off a little bit of tension between you and Kevin too.
KE: I think the number one question that I get asked is, “Did Amanda really steal your bicycle?” And that's something that didn't happen in real life. And they do play up a little bit of that tension.
There's always innate tension. Amanda and I were both stressed through a lot of this, but we always treated each other with a lot of respect, and we've always had a rapport that was really, really great. Up to this day, we're really great friends and still chat weekly, and so that was played up a little bit. But no, she didn't steal my bike.
AKB: I understand, though, that the scene where actor Dominique Sessa rides his bike up to the fence to see if the towing company still possessed Amanda's car is true.
KE: Yeah. So, there is some truth to that. So, I did, at the time, ride my bike to and from work, and I rode my bike around town. And at this time, I went — I said, “I can't find her car. I'm just going to go check.” There was a lot nearby where I worked.
And so, I rode my bike down there to see whether it was there and to check what signage they had, because they kept playing this game that, “We're not Lincoln, we're Dick's Towing instead.” But of course, I went, took pictures of the signs, and there were both signs out there. There were both Lincoln and Dick's Towing.
And so, I don't think I actually ended up seeing her car there in real life, but I did ride my bike down to the tow yard to check it out.
AKB: Can they still do that whole mishmash between the tow company names?
KE: I couldn't tell you. I wish the answer was no, but I wouldn't put it past them to do that again. I mean, I think that they do have two entities, but they have the same website. If you call the phone number, it is the same phone number. They have signs at the same location that say both Lincoln and Dick's Towing right next to each other.
AO: In the paperwork they gave me, it said Lincoln Towing at the top of it.
KE: Right? So, that's the other thing, is that in the original case, you know, Dick's Towing may have been the legal entity that towed it, but then they gave her the paperwork that said that Lincoln Towing towed it. And Lincoln Towing, of course, is the official City of Seattle towing partner, where they make, I think, an estimated, millions of dollars a year, just based on the towing fees that they collect from the City of Seattle public.I think that the power that they wield, I wouldn't put it past them to try that trick again.
AKB: Can you share any cool reactions to the movie reaching a broader audience around some of these issues?
KE: Yeah. I think some of the bigger questions I keep getting when we are doing, you know, Q and A's, and when we're asked about the movie, is — a lot of it is, “You know, what are you guys doing now?” And we've answered a little bit of that.
But the other question is, “What's going on with Lincoln Towing? Are they still the City of Seattle's exclusive towing partner, and has anything been done about that? Has the mayor done anything about that? Has city council done anything about that?” The answer is no, as far as I know.
AKB: Finally, Amanda appeared before a second judge after Lincoln Towing claimed it had tried to resolve the situation, even pointing to a past $1,000 measly offer to drop the lawsuit. The judge rejected that argument, noting the company had ignored the prior court order for over a year, and ruled it must pay $1,000 for every day it failed to return the car.
That decision worked quickly. Lincoln Towing released the vehicle the same day, though Amanda still had to fight in court over the title, damages, and the massive bill, highlighting how difficult the system can be for people already struggling.
KE: You know, there's a lot of focus on Amanda's car being stolen and it not being her fault in the first place. But then the other is, you know, that she was living out of that car, and isn't there some sort of special exception to that?
And I think the solution to that, really — and I've been advocating for this alongside Amanda — which is that there is a solution to this, which is that we should be able to mandate that tow companies don't keep your car in the first place.
It's premised on an old legal theory, you know, sort of an artisan's lien or a mechanic's lien, and in those situations, legally, they are meant to be used so that someone puts labor into something like the vehicle. But in this case, there's no labor being put into it. There's no benefit that they make to your car. They just keep it, automatically attach a lien.
But if we said, “Hey, that's no longer allowed. When I go pick up the car, I get the car back right then and there, no matter what the circumstances are, and you bill me for it, just like any other service industry. You bill me for it. If I don't pay, you can come after me with debt collectors or ding my credit just like everybody else, but you don't get to hold my car hostage — the thing I need to get to work, the thing I need to take my kids to school, and the thing I need to, God forbid, live in. You don't get to keep that and extort me for it.”
And so, that's the message I keep trying to push out to anybody out there who might have the power to change this. And this would be for people who are living in their car. It’d be the average person living in the City of Seattle or wider.
AKB: I understand that they, the filming crew, came to Seattle and that you got to spend some time with Rose, Amanda, taking her around town, showing her some of the places that were integral to the movie. Did you also — where else did they film? Did they film in L.A.?
AO: In New Jersey.
AKB: Oh, in New Jersey.
AO: Yeah, we actually went down for a couple of days and watched them film. And actually, they changed the ending of the film because of something Rose had asked me about when I went to go pick up my car, and they actually rewrote the ending because of something I said, which was kind of cool.
And Rose Byrne does an amazing job. She came out here before they filmed out here and met with me, and then we had a couple of Zoom calls, but she wanted to know everything, you know, about me, and she actually got my mannerisms, even the way I speak. But it was a lot of fun going to New Jersey and watching them film it.
And actually, the only person I was star-struck over was Dominic Sessa, because I just adore him. But it was a lot of fun going to New Jersey, and then they did come back and film some scenes here. I think they did — they said it was kind of like guerrilla, you know, scenes. They just went and did it.
AKB: And another thing that I noticed was that the movie poster looked a lot like your photo next to your ’91 Camry.
AO: That was my idea as well. I said, “You know, this picture would be, like, the perfect movie poster.” And then they ended up, you know, a recreation of the Seattle Times photo of me, and that was pretty cool, too.
AKB: Yeah, the whole character portrayal, from the wardrobe to personality and style of speech, I thought, was really dead on. So, congratulations on the movie, and your work together, and your ongoing friendship. It's very refreshing to see, and I love that you represented Seattle and communities we don't often get to hear from.
So, thank you again for sharing your insights and your story and perspective with us today.
KE: Thanks for having us.
AO: Thank you so much.
AKB: And thank you to our listeners for joining us on Discovery. Today's episode reminds us that behind every legal issue is a human story, and sometimes those stories spark broader conversations about justice, access, and reform.
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to share it with others interested in the real-world impact of law. We've referenced several articles by Danny Westneat and follow-up pieces that we're going to link to in the show notes. Until next time.
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