California E&S Insurance

I don't think you'll be able to get a firm answer to this question here (and perhaps not without going to court). That said, I'm inclined to believe that you should not be liable. My best attempt at an analysis: You have a contractual obligation to "return all items... in the condition received." Clearly you won't be able to do that, which means that you will breach the contract. However, if you can assert a viable affirmative defense, you should not be liable for any damages despite your breach. I believe you can assert the defense of "impossibility of performance." In California this defense has five elements that you must be able to show: 1. a supervening event made performance impossible or impracticable; 2. the nonoccurrence of the event was a basic assumption upon which the contract was based; 3. the occurrence of the event resulted without the fault of the party seeking to be excused; 4. the party seeking to be excused did not assume the risk of occurrence; and 5. the party has not agreed, either expressly or impliedly, to perform in spite of impossibility or impracticability that would otherwise justify nonperformance. If you were somehow negligent in allowing the burglary to happen (left the door unlocked, etc.), then you could have trouble with element 3. You didn't mention anything like that, so I'll assume negligence is not an issue. That leaves element 4 as the one that seems most likely to be a problem. A court could conceivably decide that you assumed the risk of burglary when you agreed to "take care of the... property" and maintain it "in good condition." I think it's relatively unlikely a judge would decide that because accepting liability for the criminal acts of a non-party is fairly extreme, and I think it would have to be stated more explicitly. But again, that's speculation on my part and I didn't find any California precedent confirming it. I'll add: the rent-to-own statute you mentioned does not seem to apply here. It only applies to "rental-purchase agreements." Here's a link to the section of code that defines that term: [https://codes.findlaw.com/ca/civil-code/civ-sect-1812-622.html](https://codes.findlaw.com/ca/civil-code/civ-sect-1812-622.html)

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