Legal Question in Landlord & Tenant Law in California

Charging me for fire alarm mishap

The fire alarm in my apartment started going off for no reason late Friday night. it continued for about 10 minutes and it was too late to call the office for maintenance so I disconnected the fire alarm unit in my apartment. Unknown to me, the fire dept. arrived and found that there was no fire. The next morning maintenance arrives and reconnects the unit in my apt. and informs me that the mamagement is saying that it is my fault that they could not bring the system back online due to my disconnected unit and is going to charge me $210 for the unit to be reconnected (which is only tightening one screw) plus a fine if the city charges the apartments for not having a working fire alarm system overnight in our building.

Can they really charge me for this or should I fight this?

I feel that it is more the fault of the faulty system that mistakenly went off, and I just figured that the unit was broken so I left it disconnected and had intended to have the maintenance staff replace it the next day.


Asked on 6/24/06, 8:38 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys
Randy Schlosser Law Office of RM Schlosser

Re: Charging me for fire alarm mishap

You can be charged if your actions resulted in additional costs to the property. By disconnecting the alarm it appears you caused major problems and could be held liable.

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Answered on 6/25/06, 12:00 pm


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