Terrible Renters, can we get last months rent

[Jason Craft]

My wife an I have been renting out a family home located in Orange County, California for the last several years. The latest tenants were their for 3 years. They asked if they could break out of the lease early if we found new renters. We never agreed to this in writing but we did start the process of looking for new tenants and ultimately the old tenants moved out a month prior to the official lease expiring.

The problem is, they trashed the house. Every wall had to be repainted (not sure how they got so dirty, stained and scratched). We had a microwave/oven combo that was totally destroyed and had to be replaced (never cleaned, internal coating melted off and rusted). And the list goes on. We ended up with 8k in repairs/cleaning/water damage due to negligence directly related to their 3 year stay. 

We prorated some of the costs and took into account wear and tear allowance and in the end concluded they owed us about 6k. There deposit was on 4,500, so we sent them a letter stating they owed us 1500 and if they paid we would ignore the fact that they hadn't paid last months rent.

The funnies part is that they have submitted papers to take us to small claims court for the FULL AMOUNT of their deposit!!!

2 Questions:

1) any idea what we can expect in small claim? We have detailed photos and videos of all damage before it was fixed as well as all receipts. "Wear and tear" is somewhat vague in its definition. Any idea how a judge might rule on this?

2) How can we try to get them to pay for last month's rent? I tried to research this and it looks like I would have to start the eviction process, but they have already vacated.

Any advice on this would be highly appreciated! My wife and I are really stressed over this whole thing.

Thanks!

Jason