Self-Help Eviction in California: Civil Damages and Criminal Charges

A California landlord who forces a tenant out without a court order owes, at a minimum, $250 per violation plus up to $100 for every day the violation continues, along with the tenant’s actual losses and attorney fees under Civil Code § 789.3.¹ That is the floor. Self-help eviction penalties in California climb quickly from there: criminal misdemeanor charges, punitive damages, and, in cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco, local penalties that can push a single lockout into five figures.

What Conduct Triggers the Penalties

Civil Code § 789.3 lists the specific acts a landlord cannot take to end a tenancy without going through the courts:

Shutting off or interrupting water, heat, electricity, gas, phone, elevator, or refrigeration service, whether or not the landlord controls the account.¹
Changing locks, installing a bootlock, or otherwise blocking the tenant from entering.¹
Removing exterior doors or windows.
Taking the tenant’s belongings out of the unit without written consent or a court order.¹

None of this becomes lawful because the tenant owes rent, has broken the lease, or is renting month-to-month. The statute applies across the board.

How the Civil Penalty Adds Up

Section 789.3 layers three separate categories of money on the landlord.

Actual damages. Every out-of-pocket cost the tenant incurs because of the illegal act: hotel bills, spoiled food from a utility cutoff, damaged property, moving expenses.

Statutory penalty. Up to $100 for each day or partial day the violation continues, with a $250 minimum per cause of action. A lockout that runs from Monday to Friday is five days of potential per-day penalties.¹

Attorney fees and costs. The prevailing party recovers reasonable fees. A landlord who loses pays for the tenant’s lawyer on top of everything else.¹

Repeated or subsequent violations that aren’t part of the same initial incident count as separate causes of action, each with its own $250 minimum.¹ A landlord who first shuts off the water and later changes the locks has committed two violations, not one. The statute also says its remedies are “not exclusive,” so the tenant can add punitive damages under Civil Code § 3294 if the conduct involved malice, oppression, or fraud.

Criminal Charges

A self-help eviction is not just a civil problem. Guidance from the California Attorney General tells law enforcement that a lockout can support misdemeanor charges under the Penal Code.²

Penal Code § 418 makes it a misdemeanor to use or encourage force or violence to enter or hold someone else’s property.²
Penal Code § 602.5 makes it a misdemeanor to enter or remain in a residence without the consent of the person in lawful possession. The tenant, not the owner, is the person in lawful possession of the unit.²

Criminal charges run alongside the civil case. One incident can produce both a misdemeanor prosecution and a private lawsuit. The AG’s guidance also directs officers not to help a landlord carry out a forced eviction, and to warn the landlord that the conduct is criminal.²

Extra Penalties When the Lockout Is Retaliation

If the self-help act follows a tenant’s habitability complaint, code enforcement call, or tenant-organizing activity, Civil Code § 1942.5 adds another layer. A landlord found to have retaliated owes the tenant actual damages plus punitive damages between $100 and $2,000 for each retaliatory act involving fraud, oppression, or malice, and pays the tenant’s attorney fees.³

The retaliation protection lasts 180 days after the tenant files a complaint with a government agency, reports a habitability issue, or takes part in a tenant organization.³ During that window, the burden shifts to the landlord to prove the action was unrelated to the complaint. Cutting utilities or swapping the locks in that period is close to the clearest evidence of retaliation a court will see.

Los Angeles and San Francisco Multiply the Numbers

Local ordinances in several California cities go well past the state minimums. Landlords outside these cities should still check local rules, because Oakland, Berkeley, and others have their own protections.

Los Angeles

Under the Los Angeles Municipal Code, a tenant who wins a self-help eviction case recovers three times compensatory damages (including emotional distress), civil penalties of $2,000 to $10,000 per violation, and reasonable attorney fees. If the tenant is 65 or older or disabled, the court can add up to $5,000 per violation.⁴ Punitive damages under Civil Code § 3294 remain available. A single illegal lockout of an elderly tenant in Los Angeles can produce a judgment in the tens of thousands.

San Francisco

San Francisco’s Rent Ordinance provides for treble actual damages, including mental and emotional distress, when a landlord wrongfully attempts to recover possession or removes housing services. Wrongful eviction is also a criminal misdemeanor that the district attorney can prosecute independently, and prevailing tenants recover attorney fees and costs.⁵

What a Locked-Out Tenant Should Do

Call the police first. The Attorney General’s guidance tells officers to treat illegal lockouts as criminal matters, to instruct the landlord to let the tenant back in, and to warn the landlord that the conduct is a misdemeanor. Officers should not help the landlord remove a tenant without a court order.²

If that does not resolve it, § 789.3 lets the tenant go to court the same day and ask for a temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction to force the landlord to restore access, turn utilities back on, or return belongings while the lawsuit proceeds.¹

Document everything as it happens. Photograph the changed locks, save texts and notices from the landlord, video the dark unit or dry faucet, and get a copy of any police report. Keep a dated log of conditions until access and services are fully restored, because every additional day the violation continues raises the statutory penalty the landlord owes.

Deadline to File

California generally applies a one-year statute of limitations to claims based on a statutory penalty, which is what the $250 minimum and $100-per-day figures under § 789.3 are. Claims for actual damages under other theories may have longer windows, but waiting weakens the evidence and the case. If the deadline is close, talk to an attorney, because missing it means losing the right to collect the statutory penalties at all.

1
California Legislative Information. California Code, Civil Code CIV 789.3
2
California Office of the Attorney General. Protecting Tenants Against Unlawful Lockouts
3
California Legislative Information. California Civil Code 1942.5
4
American Legal Publishing. Los Angeles Municipal Code SEC. 45.35 – Private Right of Action; Civil Penalties
5
American Legal Publishing. San Francisco Administrative Code SEC. 37.9 – Evictions