Legal Question in Landlord & Tenant Law in California

I own and operate a residential trailer park. Included in monthly rent is water. I have a tenant who left on travel for more than a month. something happened inside the tenants trailer while he was gone resulting in a broken water pipe in his bathroom. This was not by noticeable by management or neighbors as the water went under his trailer through a floor vent and drained into a drainage ditch behind his trailer.

I received a water bill for $2,040.00 The water bill should have been about $ 980.00 (That's what it normally runs this time of year).

I paid a leak detection company $ 700.00 to find the problem as I thought I had a broken water pipe underground. The leak detectors found the problem at the trailer.

My question: Can I charge the tenant for the estimated overage on the water bill, and can I also charge for the leak detection service?

Thank you


Asked on 7/23/12, 4:21 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys
George Shers Law Offices of Georges H. Shers

As the defect occurred inside the trailer and was something you could not detect or fix easily, you should be able to charge the tenant for the full water bill and also the efforts to find the leak [neither would have occurred without his being negligent].

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Answered on 7/23/12, 9:48 pm


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