Liability for hot water burns

[Vaughan Moody]

I have a question about liability. Our tenant is a licensed plumber. Yesterday there was a leak coming from a valve that comes out from the wall under the bathroom sink, so he turned the knob on the valve to tighten it which caused the knob to snap/break off. This resulted in very hot water shooting out of the valve, onto our tenant.

We think the valve snapped off because the water in the building is very hard, which may have had some effect on the valve connection over time.

To stop the water from spraying all over him and the floor, our tenant’s instinct was to try to cup his hands over the valve. Unfortunately the hot water burned his hands. Our tenants called my wife within a few minutes of this happening. Despite it being about 10pm, luckily our tenants were able to call the guy who does plumbing/maintenance for the condominium/building where they live, who lives around the corner from the property. He shut off the water and replaced the valve.

My wife recommended our tenant soak his hands in water from a bottle (the running water had been shut off at this point) then go to the hospital asap to get his hands checked out. Due to the pain and the fact that he & his wife have a one year old toddler, his friend came over to drive him to the hospital.

It’s currently 5:00am so we don’t know the severity of the burns, but we know from the last communication last night that he was given morphine for the pain.

The wife got their baby back to bed then had to spend time soaking up the water on the floor with any remaining towels. Of course, we found out this was on the night of their wedding anniversary.

We are concerned that even if the burns don’t end up causing long term damage, our tenant may have to take time off work because he works with his hands. We offered to compensate him if he has to take the next day (today) off work, to which we were told he had this whole week off, so he was already going to be off.

Even though we have a good relationship with our tenants, we are concerned that someone such as a family member may encourage our tenant to sue us. We live in California and from my limited knowledge, my understanding is that the laws in California are tenant-friendly rather than landlord-friendly.

Other than the well-being of our tenant, our other concern is if there are expensive medical bills. Who should be responsible for those? (I should probably look at our landlord insurance policy to see if there is something in there regarding tenant injuries).

As a gesture of goodwill, and because we feel bad for his pain & what they went through, I’m thinking of driving (an hour each way) to hand deliver a gift like an “edible arrangements”, and possibly a gift card for a nice/expensive restaurant near where they live (or pay in advance for a meal for two, if a gift card isn’t possible).

I’d like to get anyone else’s thoughts about whether the tenant would have much of a case if they decided to sue us. Any other thoughts or advice would be welcome & appreciated. Thanks!