Here is a question to the blog clinic from David who is a landlord:
Hi , My tenant has stated that the shower door shattered on its own.
My research….asking shower door manufacturers if its possible…state a shower door will shatter if knocked or slammed heavily or misused.
I believe they are expecting me to be held responsible.
I purchased the shower unit ….Dec 2009 and cost £289.00 and it has stood several tenants without problems. Do I tell them to replace it at their expense?
Well the shower door will hardly have spontaneously shattered without anyone touching it at all.
So the question is, could it have shattered after long use by the sort of contact that would fall within ‘fair wear and tear’ or could it only have shattered by some kind of misuse?
Analysing lliability
In this sort of claim , if it went to adjudication, the adjudicator would be looking to see whether on the balance of probabilities, it is more likely that the tenants were responsible for the damage or not.
It sounds to me as if the tenants were at fault here.
Partly because of the manufacturers information, and partly because these items will presumably not be allowed out of the factory without complying with stringent health and safety standards.
Broken shower doors will be a big hazard, particularly in the bathroom where people will be without clothes and therefore more vulnerable to injury. So I would expect them to be manufactured with this in mind and to be resistant to ordinary bangs and knocks.
Also, had this door had any inherent weakness, you would have expected it to have broken earlier. So on balance my view is that it is more likely to have broken through misuse.
However as it is nearly 5 years old, I expect an adjudicator would make some deduction for ‘betterment’ as even if the damage was down to the tenants you are not entitled to ‘new lamps for old’.
Practical considerations
The shower door will need to be replaced so no doubt you will want to do this yourself – otherwise either the tenants may replace it with the wrong door or use the shower without a door, which will cause damage to the bathroom.
However (if I am right) it is something which you should be able to claim from the deposit at the end of the tenancy if the tenants fail to reimburse you (less an appropriate deduction for betterment).
Make sure though that, if this is challenged, you provide the adjudicator with a copy of the information from the manufacturers about the circumstances under which this door can break, along with any other safety information which may have been provided at the time you bought the unit, so he has something he can base his decision on.
(Note – this situation shows why you should always keep EVERYTHING about the items provided in your rented property).
What do others think? Has anyone experience of this sort of thing? If any adjudicators are reading this, please leave a comment and let us know how you would approach this on the information provided!
I agree with all the above. However, in these situations landlords often seem to forget they have insurance. It has to be worth considering making a claim.
That is very true. However it is not a large sum and may fall within the deductible for some policies.
I agree claim from tenant based on info received but unless the house is high end i would question a £300 spend.
I agree with your assessment Tessa. It made me smile somewhat cynically as these things seems to ‘just happen’ to tenants, never home owners – and it is never their fault. The number of far fetched excuses I have heard in my time as a landlady…I think the best one was ‘metal fatigue’ on a dining chair (which had been leaned back on and broken). Really? My partner, a structural engineer, wouldn’t agree with you there!
Not with a shower door but shower doors are made from safety glass.
We have some table mats that are safety glass; they have coped with normal everyday life for well over 5 years. However one day, one of them shattered as I placed a plate on it, I did not drop the plate or put it down hard. It was very impressive, one minute there was a place mat, and the next minute there was lot of small bits of glass, none of the glass was sharp enough to be a real danger.
The other mat in the set have been OK, they are not handled with “kit gloves” and do get knocked at times with no issues.
Safety glass is designed to break into lots of small safe bits if it does break; the heat treatment that is used builds up lots of stresses in the glass. Sometimes but not often the glass will spontaneous disintegrate.
It will also disintegrate if is knocked hard with a sharp object, there is no way to tell between the two…
See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_glass_breakage and http://educationcenter.ppg.com/glasstopics/spontaneous_breakage.aspx then try proving that it is the current tenants actions that are to blame….
This is one of the reason I will choose to use laminated glass rather then safety glass.
I am not sure the manufacturers info would be any good. If you as the manufacturer are your products crap that break easily, what would you expect them to say.
Interesting thread and the problem is Ian’s post which is correct. I’ve had experience of this and 99% of the time it is tenant excuse, but the other 1% of the time it is the glazing equivalent of spontaneous combustion!!
My experience comes from a son in law who is a double glazing contractor and odd, inexplicable things can happen with glass. As Judy says, usually to tenants.
John I don’t know where £300 comes from but certainly for a quality shower door you’d send that. Not to replace one though where the entire original shower was £289.
Ian the one area I disagree with you but see your point, is proving it was the tenant wot done it – there was no damage when they started so the proof shoe is on the other foot.
I agree though – difficult.
I think it would be difficult to get the tenant to pay for this. You are relying on the DPS to adjudicate but this will likely happen some time after the event at move out stage, will it not? Some time after the facts have been watered down and forgotten. And isn’t there a betterment issue to consider?
Claire, http://www.gcpropertylettings.co.uk
As Tessa has said, it will likely come down to an adjudication based on the balance of probability. Yes, glass can shatter spontaneously, but it’s very unlikely to do so.
We’ve had it happen once before and the landlord agreed with our proposal to split the cost 50/50 which seemed pretty reasonable to me.
I have come across a curved shower door which did shatter while the owner was away. From memory it was about two years old and the shower company did replace it free of charge. The problem you have is that someone was in residence so proof of the cause is going to be difficult.
i’d say having someone in resifdence makes it easier to claim tenant damage, even if accidental. Had the property been emoty then it could have been spontaneous collapse – but extremely unlikely
This JUST happened to me! I live alone, I don’t slam the shower door – actually, from the minute I occupied the apartment, I noticed the incredibly shoddy work done on the bathroom ie: there was no plastic “water stopper”that should be attached at the bottom of the door to stop the water from coming out of the shower! Anyway, last night, I took a shower at seven – at ten pm, I was startled out of bed to the sound of crashing in the bathroom – the glass of the shower door completely exploded! I was absolutely shocked when I got a call from the landlord telling me that it was normal wear and tear and I was responsible to get a new door!!!! What?? Please someone, unless I literally shot a gun at the door, how is this my fault??!!