Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Re: tenants rights

The situation isn't so simple as deciding who is "at fault." Responsibility for repairs in lease situations is based on contract, not negligence or fault as in an accident (tort) situation. You'll need to refer to your lease to find the answer.

As an analogy that might be helpful in understanding the situation, suppose you rent a car from Hertz or Avis for a two-week vacation. Somewhere enroute, another car bumps your is a parking lot. You rental can company doesn't give a hoot whether you have the other driver's license number or not, or whether the driver that bumped your rental did it by accident, intentionally, or perhaps the car was unoccupied and rolled into you due to an act of God such as an earthquake. When you return the damaged rental car, the agency will hold you liable for the cost of repairs. Liability arises out of the contract terms, not the fault.

Generally, written residential leases make the landlord responsible for normal wear and tear, and maybe pre-existing defects; and the tenant is responsible for damage and abuse caused or permitted by the tenant.

The bottom line is that I think responsibility for acts of vandalism by third parties is a gray area not clearly falling into any of the well-recognized responsibility categories. An answer might be found in a careful reading of the lease's maintenance-responsibility clauses. I know for sure that if this were a triple-net commercial lease, the tenant would be responsible, but this is not such a situation.

I would also look at the insurance section of the lease (if it has one). If either the tenant or the landlord is responsible under the lease for carrying an insurance policy, such as a renter's policy, that would usually include coverage for this kind of damage (vandalism or malicious mischief), then the party who was supposed to carry the insurance will probably be held liable in court on an assumption-of-the-risk theory.