Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Re: Landlord vs tenant security deposit dispute

I reviewed Civil Code section 1950.5(l) (that's the small letter L, not the numeral one) to refresh my memory; it calls for discretionary punitive damages up to 2x the amount of the security deposit for bad-faith retention of the deposit, but I did not see anything about attorney fees.

Therefore, attorney fees could be awarded to the prevailing party only if the lease or rental agreement so provides, but I think most of them do have attorney-fee clauses nowadays. So, I guess the answer is, if the tenant wins, probably yes; if the landlord wins, the tenant probably has to pay the landlord's reasonable attorney fees. It would depend on a contractual provision.

Note that contractual attorney-fee provisions are treated as mutual and reciprocal, with the prevailing party always entitled to recover its fees even if the clause is written as a one-way provision.