Estimation of damages.. what detail?

[nuna]

Alameda, CA

I am suing my landlord for the return of my depost and for damages to personal items due to water damage twice during my month2month rental.
The damage was mostly to clothes and books, totalling ~$150.

Q: How detailed does my damage estimation have to be? Do I need pictures or to bring the items into court?

 

[MaggieK]

Pictures are good..damaged items are even better in small claims court. Be prepared to state what you paid for the items new,receipts would be great, and how old the items were when the damage was done. Depreciation/usage will be figured in to the value. Good luck!

 

[Veronica01]

You could collect your deposit depending on the state of the apartment when you moved out. For that you should provide evidence, mostly photographs, that the apartment was in good shape in compliance with the terms of your lease. Make sure that the pictures are dated. You will find many answers responsive to your question in the sectiion Tenant/LL in this forum, particularly for the court in CA.

I am not aware of any court that made LL to pay for the damage of tenant’s personal property. This is your responsibility. I do not know what is Maggie’s experience that led her to suggest to you that you could recover the cost of the damaged personal property. May be you will not loose much if you ask for it, but I doubt you will collected anything. One thing for sure is that you could use pictures of damaged personal items to strengthen your contention about the occurrence of the incident.

If you had insurance on your personal property then the pictures are your supportive evidence to collect from the insurance company, not from LL.

 

[I AM ALWAYS LIABLE]

You could collect your deposit depending on the state of the apartment when you moved out. For that you should provide evidence, mostly photographs, that the apartment was in good shape in compliance with the terms of your lease. Make sure that the pictures are dated. You will find many answers responsive to your question in the sectiion Tenant/LL in this forum, particularly for the court in CA.

I am not aware of any court that made LL to pay for the damage of tenant’s personal property. This is your responsibility. I do not know what is Maggie’s experience that led her to suggest to you that you could recover the cost of the damaged personal property. May be you will not loose much if you ask for it, but I doubt you will collected anything. One thing for sure is that you could use pictures of damaged personal items to strengthen your contention about the occurrence of the incident.

If you had insurance on your personal property then the pictures are your supportive evidence to collect from the insurance company, not from LL.

My response:

Veronica, our writer never said what the "cause" of the water damage was, and whether the LL was negligent in some manner. However, there is a presumption that our writer was talking about "negligence" of the landlord in some respect; or, why else would she want to sue the LL for her personal property?

If I had a landlord, and that LL caused damage to my personal property, you can BELIEVE that I'd be suing the LL.

Please review California Civil Code section 1714 - - to wit:

Landlords are now held to the general statutory duty to use "ordinary care or skill in the management" of their property. They are responsible for injuries proximately caused by a failure to exercise such due care, except to the extent that injured persons, "willfully or by want of ordinary care," brought the injury upon themselves. [Ca Civil § 1714(a)]


IAAL

 

[JETX]

I think Veronica should change her 'signature' to read:
"If Veronica thinks she knows, its because she has no idea of the legal facts and issues and is constantly confused."

 

[Veronica01]

Liable, your comment is well taken. I should've considered the possibility of LL negligence. As you noted, the writer did not give a hint about it.

 

[nuna]

Reason for sueing LL..

I had already asked (on another post) whether I was in a position to sue for damages and got mixed responses.

I was in an apartment for 2 years which was adjacent to the laundry room. One day the pipes in the laundry room had some problems and leaked into my apartment, moldly water made it to mu stuff. Management said they had repaired it and did not allow me to move to a different apartment (although many were available) then the problem happened again. Now I've moved out and am suing for the damages since the place was not properly maintained in the first place and the pipes were not properly repaired after the 1st incident.