Towing Issues: Car towed From property, continuesly, thanksgiving holiday

Question
Hi,

I live in sacramento, california in an apartment complex where individuals have 1 closed parking space. Me and my wife both own vehicles and i keep my car in the closed parking space because its relatively newer.
About a month ago we saw a tow sticker on her vehicle and wanted to let the property manager know about it(this is in a open space parking for residents).When I was on my way to the property manager i saw the maintenance guy and I briefly mentioned him about the vehicle. "He said oh dont worry about that i take care of it, it was our mistake we put that there we did not know that it was your vehicle". So, i did not go to the property manager and in a few hours sticker was gone.

However same thing apparently happened few days ago, when we were gone for the thanksgiving holiday with our other vehicle to visit our parents. When we came back her car was gone, and there was a mail from the towing company in the mail. The property manager claims that the reason that they put the tow permit on the car was because they believed that we were storing the vehicle on the property. However, this was not the case. We have used the car for a long time and parked in the same space, and there was one week of period where we did not use the car (this is when we got our first tow sticker), since my wife is a new driver getting used to the roads and currently unemployed so she rarely gets to used the vehicle. The 2nd time we left the car in the same space for a long time was when the car was already gone after we came back from the holiday. One thing that i need to mention is that, the reason we could not use the car continuesly  about a week before we went away for the thanksgiving holiday was because the car battery was dead, so it took a few days to get it replaced, then we used the car again for couple days and the battery died again. So, we did not have time to get it fixed again before the holidays and let it sit there.

Some pointers.

-I asked several times the property manager for parking permit, and she did not give it to me.
-I did sign up my car as one of my vehicles in my binder.
-Never recieved an official warning by phone or by mail.


What are the chances that i will win in the small claims court?

Thank you,

Ari


Answer
Wow this is one of the biggest issues with dealing with apartment life and having multiple vehicles... There are never enough spaces for vehicles..

Ok even if the vehicle is driven daily it does cause problems as you seen with no permit for the second vehicle... Now if the manager does not bother to issue the permits or does not care then it can not be helped when dealing in problems like this.

The fact you did not go to the manager but talked to the maintenance guy, does not help either. The manager is the final person in the chain of command there.  

Warnings by phone or mail generally do not happen from the management, but the warning sticker does meet requirements for warnings.

As to the chances of winning in court your chances are 50 - 50 as to winning. Either you will win or you will lose.  Hate to say that but it is the truth...
Hope this helps a bit.