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Personal Property damage due to apartment maintenance work
Asked Sep 8, 2010, 02:56 PM
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19 Answers Hi, I live in Sunnyvale, California. My apartment complex recently replaced all the toilets in the entire complex with the eco-friendly ones. Our building's turn came over the long weekend and we were away. They changed the toilet on Thursday and a water pipe started leaking rapidly on Saturday early morning. This flooded the entire apartment and most of the our clothes and some of the furniture got permanently damaged. The maintenance workers came in only 2.5 hrs. Later when the water flew out of the apartment and they cleaned it up. But the carpets were still soaked and the clothes and furniture remained wet until we came in on Tuesday morning. We roughly assess our loss to be about 2.5K for the garments and the furniture. I have a renter's insurance policy with a 1K deductible. However, since this is due to toilet upgrade the apartment management did, it is entirely due to their human-error. However, in my lease agreement, their is a clause that says: "WAIVER OF CLAIMS AND INDEMNIFICATION: ............<lot of text> Tenant hereby expressly releases Owner any and all liability or loss or damage to Tenant's property arising out of water leakage, borken pipes, theft or other criminal activity. ............<lot of text> " Do you think it would still be a good idea to file a 'small claim' against the apartment management as this has been caused due ot their faulty installation of th new toilet system? Thanks so much in anticipation |
19 Answers
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| You CANNOT waive your rights, no matter what the contract/lease says. This would be the same as me having you sign a waiver that if you are a passenger in my car and I'm in an accident, you can't sue. You bet I'd sue in Small Claims Court - and I'd be there first thing in the AM. It would appear that your homeowners policy had reasonable coverage - this was their mistake, not some "spontaneous" plumbing failure. I can't wait to see how this works out - please keep us informed. | ||||
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| Thank you so much for your quick responses guys, I really appreciate it. The apartment complex has torn out the carpet from the entire apartment and took out all the doors. Living here is pretty challenging for the next couple of days when you can't even step on the floor as it is full of damp wood and loose nuts and bolts. The apartments office just called me to tell that they will waive off the rent for these 3 days until they put the new carpets in (wow!). However, my question here is: What is the downside of me filing a 'smaill claim' against them and not getting the result in my favor? I mean, is there nay possibility they can sue me back for anything? Thanks Again | ||||
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| I would sue in small claims court only AFTER contacting some sort of california legal services. Maybe use lawhelpcalifornia.org. You have renters insurance for your benefit. They should have insurance for the building, but they will do an investigation. If they find it is due to their negligence or faulty work, they will be 100% liable. Insurance companies are in depth at checking for wrong-doings these days. You may also want to ask your landlord if the people doing the work were licensed and bonded. They ultimately have the decision in who to hire for repairs, but since there are damages to YOUR property, that may play in your favor if they weren't experts in their field. | ||||
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| I again went to the apartment office today to ask who did the upgrade and they told me that it is the Santa Clara county people who did it in their effort to go green. Also, they say it's the water pipe that burst and had nothing to do with installing the new toilets. I don't believe that it true since we never had any leakage issues in the past 3 years in this apartment and this happened only after installing the new toilets and that too when no one was using it (as we were away on the vacation). Similar incidents have happened in other buildings after installing the new toilets in our complex but since people were at home while this happened, all of them were able to save their personal properties. The damage to our apartment is huge just because no one attended to it for a few hours until the water started flowing out of the unit into the corridor. | ||||
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| I would assume that it has to do with the actual pipes/lines themselves. Or perhaps someone did not make sure the water was off at the valve before doing repairs. In most cases, repairs like this require also inspecting the pipes and doing any necessary upgrades. If you don't mind me asking, when was the unit built? I grew up in San Jose so I know the rents are expensive and most of the units are not brand new in the area. IF it was the county, you have every right to tell your landlord you want their information to file a complaint. If it is the county, they are more than likely licensed and bonded. It would then rely on your landlord having them fix the issue. This sounds complicated due to the fact that I have a feeling there will be an investigation to determine who is responsible. Document every effort you've made to contact the landlord or the county in order to resolve this issue. | ||||
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