Legal Question in Landlord & Tenant Law in California

There is nothing ILLEGAL about it, but it is not legally sufficient to get you out of the contract. Unless the unit has become legally uninhabitable, when you sign a one year lease you are obligated for one year. You are free to move out, but you are legally liable for the rent for the full term of the lease. The only limit on your liability is that if you do move out early and surrender the premises by turning over the keys and any other means of access (a garage remote for example) the landlord must take commercially reasonable steps to find a replacement tenant and if they do, you are off the hook for the rent once the new tenant moves in. You are still responsible for the rent up until then, plus any advertising and other costs to the landlord of getting a new tenant into the unit. So if you want to move out early, I strongly suggest you give your landlord WRITTEN notice, keeping a copy, of the date you will move out, and telling the landlord to start looking for a new tenant right away. That's all you can do and hope the landlord finds someone quick.