What are legal precedents or causes of action for successfully suing a
public storage facility located in Santa Monica, California with regards to
grand theft of my personal property?

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Request for Question Clarification by hagan-ga on 22 Aug 2005 07:01 PDT

A little more information would help.  Your belongings were IN the
storage facility, I assume.  And I assume they were there by mutual
agreement between you and the storage facility?
Did the facility provide any explanation for their removal of your
belongings?  Often, the storage agreement gives the facility the
express right to take and sell the items in storage if the storage
bill is unpaid for a certain length of time.  Is that what happened?

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Clarification of Question by chinchilla05-ga on 22 Aug 2005 09:31 PDT

Yes my belongins were in the storage facility and my belongings were
stolen as in someone got into the back of my storage unit through the
dry wall and stole over $2,000 worth of electronic equipment.  They
never even had to break my lock.  I believe it was an inside job.

I did sign a contract and signed a waiver stating that the storage
facility is not liable for damages, but a waiver doesn't mean at all
that they are not liable.

I just need help finding some kind of legal precedent that would allow
me a loophole through this waiver and successfully sue them for my
money back.

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Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 23 Aug 2005 08:02 PDT

chinchilla05-ga,

The amount of the claim ($2,000) is well within the $5,000 limit of
Los Angeles County's small claims court.

I would suggest you file a small claims action against the company. 
Filing is easy and inexpensive.  In my experience, many companies will
quickly settle outstanding claims rather than take their chances
before a small claims judge.

The judge is empowered to decide if a contract is reasonable, and if
the language of the contract means the company has no responsibilities
for preventing theft.

The process is laid out clearly at this website:


http://www.lasuperiorcourt.org/smallclaims/


Let me know if this information meets your needs.  If not, what else
do you need to make for a complete answer.


pafalafa-ga

You may also want to consider checking the county courthouse computer
records under the name of the business to see if there have been
similar actions/lawsuits brought against them in the past.

4KEITH (I'm NOT a GOOGLE Researcher)

Try having a look at "Breach of Contract" information below.  This was
pulled directly off a website geared for owners, operators, and
builders of storage facilites and will give you some "insight" as to
how to "back-door" them with your claim.  Usually if you go in talking
like you "know" that they (the storage facility) are required to
contact their insurance company, or if you ask for his/her insurance
company's contact information & relevant information, they will want
to start working with you to solve the problem vise having suspicions
raised.

   http://www.insideselfstorage.com/articles/231FEAT1.html

Also, here is a direct link to the "California Self Storage
Association" and there is information on the California Self-Service
Storage Facility Act Business & Professions Code (Section 21700-21716)
under the legal corner section of the website.

   http://www.cssaweb.com/

Along with that, you may simply want to check with the Better Business
Bureau in your area that can further provide you information if the
company has had any complaints filed against them, etc.  Also, you can
see if anyone else has or wants to file a complaint with this said
company on the second website.

   http://www.bbb.org/
   http://www.complaints.com

The following will be links to the California State Statues, Civil
Codes, and Probate Code which all business is ran by.  Most of these
codes that deal with landlords & tenents come under Civil Code section
1965.

   http://www.lawsource.com/also/usa.cgi?ca
   http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/calawquerycodesection=prob&codebody=&hits=20

Lastly, you could always contact the Department of Consumer Affairs at
the address below:
   Department of Consumer Affairs 
   Post Office Box 310 
   Sacramento, CA 95802

If you don't find your answer with all this infomation, something's
gone drastically wrong!  Let me know how you get on...

Cliff

The self storage facility will have something on their General
Liability policy called "Warehouseman's Legal Liability."  This
coverage covers your property in the event that the property was
mishandled, ruined, etcetera.  This coverage will be sublimited and
it's likely that they have only 10,000 or 25,000 worth of WLL.  One
key thing is that if they stole your property, no insurance will
apply.  You can make a homeowner's claim to pay for the missing
property.  It will be hard to sue them for one reason... every one of
those places have really good rental agreements that you signed.

Hope that helps.  Oh yeah, you won't sue them anyway... it's way too expensive.