Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

It depends on the terms of your lease.

Mr. Roach is correct that it would depend on the terms of your lease. Most commercial leases place the tenant essentially in the shoes of an owner for the term of the lease; all maintenance and repairs fall to the tenant. In residential leases that is not commonly the case, and such terms are not generally favored. So an ambiguous term that the tenant is responsible for maintenance is unlikely to be interpreted as requiring replacement of a destroyed fence. However, a well crafted clear lease that provides for a residential tenant to take full responsiblilty for the property during the term of the lease could be drafted and would probably be upheld.

If under the lease you are responsible [which none of us know as we have not seen the lease], there are still some additional options:

1. if it is a residential rental and the fence is built on the property line with another house which is entirely enclosed by four fences, the other house owner has to share the costs with you;

2. if the landlord knew or reasonably should have know that the fence was likely to fall over in a storm but you did not have that knowledge, then he may have misrepresented a term of the rental to you so that the clause requiring you to repair the fence would be unenforceable;

3. if he has insurance coverage and you do not, is he willing to submit a claim and you reimburse him for any deductible and perhaps even short term increase in his insurance rates?

I think you get the drift from the prior three answers, each of which is substantially correct. I'm a residential landlord and under my plain-vanilla leases I'd be responsible, but other outcomes are possible.