Legal Question in Employment Law in Washington

Re: housesitting

That depends on many things. You should not consider this email a definitive "yes" or "no", because even taking into account the material I will discuss below, it's impossible to answer your question without knowing what happened. So, if you and the house sitter have agreed to post the question on law guru, you can't use this answer to make the decision.

You have posted this question under labor and employment law, so I am assuming you are considering the housesitter an employee. Is this an informal arrangement (a neighbor that you asked to look after the house or a friend who stayed there for you), a regular employee (perhaps someone who works in your home part time or full time) or a service that you contracted with to house sit? Also, how did the damage occur and what sort of loss are we talking about?

If the damage was the result of negligence by the house sitter, the house sitter may be responsible. If negligence is not involved, in other words, if the damage occurred in spite of the house sitter conducting themselves in a reasonable manner, the house sitter is probably not responsible. If the damage occurred because of a hazard in the house (for example, the house sitter fell into the table because the young Great Dane that he or she was dog sitting for you came bounding by), the house sitter most likely would not be responsible.

As a practical matter, if you are working with a house sitting service with which you contracted, you probably should ask the company to make it right. If the sitter is an employee, unless you can show that the damage was intentional vandalism, you probably cannot collect. If the sitter is a friend or neighbor, whether you could collect or not would depend on the details.