My question involves towing laws for the State of: California
My landlord owns a parking lot right outside our apartment, in which he allows tenants to park. I've been parking back there for months, without any problems until now. On Wednesday I parked in a spot that I usually never park in, which I didn't think would be a problem, since none of the spots are marked. The parking lot is essentially a dirt lot. A couple days later, on Saturday morning, I stepped out to find that my car was missing.
I called the tow company to see if it had been towed, since the landlord has posted signs discouraging people who are not authorized to park there. Apparently, someone had signed to have my car towed (I will be referring to this person as the "signer"), but it was not my landlord (the owner of the parking lot) who did it. I called my landlord and he was shocked that someone had done that. He would never have had our car towed. It turned out that I had parked in the signer's "reserved spot." I was never aware until now that there were reserved spots in the lot, and the landlord had never told us this either.
First of all, does this signer actually have towing authority? I believed that the only people that should have towing authority are the owner, and anyone that the owner gives that authority to, which in this case, was not the signer. My landlord was actually pretty upset that someone felt entitled to have my car towed. Should the towing company have checked that the person that had my car towed actually had towing authority? Secondly, the towing company did not require the signer to provide any form of legal identification. The signer could have given them a fake name and a fake phone number.
When I got to the impound lot, they told me that if my car was unlawfully towed, that the signer would be responsible for up to 4x the impound fee. However, they never disclosed the identify of the signer to me, and they said that it was not up to them to go after the signer for the impound fee. Then they told me that I would have to wait till Monday to have my landlord get this sorted out with the owner of the towing company, so I ate the $700 loss to get my car back.
I'm pretty angry with the towing company and the signer. What can I do?

