If I use the Deposit Protection Service-provided Alternative Dispute Resolution, is there any danger of legal fees or legal consequences? The background of the dispute is below. To be clear, this is not really about the money, but about the principle. I believe the landlord is attempting to take advantage, and many tenants more timid than myself would simply knuckle under and pay. I want to make the landlord understand she won't get away with treating people this way. The DPS provides a dispute resolution service which the landlord is proposing to use, if I do not pay up the £150 she wants to replace the hob. The only circumstances I would pay up, rather than go to the dispute resolution, is if I were exposing myself to some significant risk by choosing the latter. IOW: is it plausible that the dispute resolution service would hand me a significantly bigger bill than this landlord is demanding? Is it likely that they could turn around and say 'she only asked for £150, but actually you have to pay her £2000', or something like that? (for reference, the deposit is £1200) **Edit: A user asked why I would think that a bill of (say) £2000 is a possibility. As it happens, I don't think that such a big bill is a possible consequence of going through the DPS resolution process. I am asking because my partner wants to just pay up and be done with it, because she is afraid of unforeseen consequences. I want to be able to reassure my partner that those fears are unfounded. The point is, it commonplace for the DPS to look at the evidence and decide the landlord deserves more than the landlord asked for?** The background I have recently moved out of rented accommodation. I am having a dispute with my landlord over the deposit, which is lodged with the DPS (I checked, it is). The dispute is over a gas hob. The hob is controlled by plastic nobs, one of which I broke while cleaning. My ex-landlord believes that this means the hob is now unsafe and unusable. She wants to replace the whole hob with a new one, and charge us for it. I think this is absurd, because: 1) The hob was not new when I moved in two years ago, let alone now. Buying a new hob is not mitigating her losses. edit: clarification regarding above -- I'm no lawyer. But it's my understanding that if the hob is indeed broken, I only have to pay what it was worth at the moment before it was broken. If it was only as good as a second hand hob going for e.g. £40, then £40 is what I have to pay. As I said I'm no lawyer, so please advise me if I am mistaken. I also believe, per number 2) below, that the hob can be economically repaired in any case 2) I do not accept that there is anything wrong with the hob apart from the absence of one plastic knob which could be easily replaced. The landlord is also contending that one of the taps is 'jammed down' and can't be turned. I don't know what she means by that, except that I was able to turn them. One of them was stiffer than the others, but I do not think that is as a result of me removing and replacing the knobs to clean the hob. I asked the landlady who says the hob is unsafe, and she said 'the gas inspector'. She gave me his mobile number, but not his name or credentials. I strongly suspect she is getting advice from people who stand to benefit from fitting a new gas hob instead of repairing it. She says that cooker companies have advised her that no-one fixes gas hobs because it's too dangerous, which again I believe is ridiculous. A google search in my local area reveals a dozen companies who do this. One other thing: the landlady has known for months that the knob was broken because this 'gas inspector' came round and looked at the hob. If it was indeed damaged by my act and unsafe, he would have known that then, and reported it to the landlady. In that case the landlady would have known that I was living with an unsafe appliance, and would have been breaking the law in a pretty serious way by not addressing that problem... right?
The landlady is trying it on. The purpose of a deposit is to protect the landlord from being left out of pocket by: damage to the property rent arrears Reasonable wear and tear does not constitute damage. It seems unlikely that the stiff tap is as a result of damage. The hob is not so clear cut: the landlady could argue that it was damaged, albeit by accident, and the cost of repair taken from your deposit. If she insists that the only remedy is to replace the hob, she should make an appropriate deduction to reflect the fact that it is several years old and will be replaced by one that is new (thereby gaining her some value). It would be reasonable for you to expect to see the written report from the gas inspector who has condemned the whole hob in that case. But I find it hard to believe that: the plastic knob cannot be replaced doing so would make the hob unsafe, if the knob can be removed for cleaning it's my understanding that if the hob is indeed broken, I only have to pay what it was worth at the moment before it was broken. Your liability is to return her to the position she would have been in had the damage not occurred. If that means replacing a removable plastic part instead of the whole hob, that would be a reasonable remedy.
Once your rental contract starts, your landlord must give you access to the rented flat. If he doesn't do so he is in breach of contract. You could sue him, but that would be a bad start for a longer term contractual agreement. It might be less time and effort to look for a new flat. And do you really want to be in a long term contract with someone who breaches contract right from the start based on arbitrary reasons? In any case, you can and you should cut the rent proportionally for every day without access to the flat. Your landlord has by no means a right to check your luggage. Even if there would be such a regulation in the contract, it would be void, because of invasion of privacy. It looks to me that you are in for some bad times with such a landlord. I can assure you that most landlords are not like this. Another reason to probably look for a new flat. Legally you are right, but what does that help you if your landlord is trouble?
As a matter of contract law it would not be possible to enforce a requirement to pay legal fees without agreement. You could easily see how this would be problematic: one could just draft letters to hundreds or thousands of people and require them to pay the costs of composing the letter. My understanding is that this is common practice in the United States (see speculative invoicing). However, people are generally free to pay whatever they want to anyone they want. The other side is free to pay the legal costs, they just probably won't. In some common law jurisdictions, the concept of a Calderbank offer may be another reason to write a letter such as this; the settlement offer can be relied upon in later proceedings as an indication as to the costs that would be appropriate to award to the winning party, should the offeree unnecessarily prolong legal proceedings
The landlord is not free of liability risks. In California, everybody is responsible for injury brought about by lack of ordinary care or skill in management of his or her property or person. This applies to landlords, falling under Business Proprietor’s Liability for the Criminal Conduct of Others. Therefore the landlord must use reasonable care to protect tenants and guests from another person's harmful conduct on the property if the conduct can be can reasonably anticipated. The duty is towards anyone on tenants and guests alike. To figure out whether the landlord has breached his duty of care, the courts will "balance" the probability of harm to the tenant with the burden of the duty imposed on the landlord to prevent or mitigate the risk of harm, see Vasquez v. Residential Investments, Inc., 118 Cal. App. 4th 269. In that instance, the landlord failed to replace a missing pane of glass on the front door, contributing to the tenant's murder, for which the landlord was held liable (wrongful death). This ruling has extensive discussion of that balancing act. The crucial question is, how did the assault happen, and how do the landlords actions relate to the assault? The answer may be different in other jurisdictions. In the modified scenario, liability would hinge on scenario details (I'll continue to assume California). The factual question is whether in light of the background check, the assault was foreseeable, and to what extent it was preventable – what did the landlord do wrong? For instance, if the criminal history check revealed a number of arrests for assault in the state and the check was limited to CA (the new tenant moved to CA just a year ago), and if the assault was in old-tenant's room which had no lock due to landlord indifference, then the landlord is more likely to be held liable (he could have fixed the lock for a few dollars, or paid for a better criminal check). On the other hand, if a thorough criminal check reveals no arrests or complaints for anything, anywhere, and the assault happened in the common area while talking politics, there is no reasonable course of action that the landlord could have undertaken to prevent the assault (hiring 24 hour guards would not be reasonable, in this scenario). In Vasquez, the issue came down to the landlord's failure to implement a cheap fix on the front door. In a third version of your scenario, suppose that there was some evidence of past violent behavior, but the only fault that could be assigned to the landlord is the fact of renting to the new tenant. Does a landlord have a duty to deny housing to a person with a past record of violent behavior? It is legal in California to do background checks and deny a prospective tenant a lease based on existing criminal history, as long as the criteria are applied consistently (not discriminatorily), and not in a jurisdiction where criminal checks are illegal (Oakland). There is a non-fantasy scenario where that includes "the US", given a guidance from HUD, based on a disparate impact analysis. HUD says that a housing provider excluding applicants with arrest but no conviction "cannot satisfy its burden of showing that such policy or practice is necessary to achieve a substantial, legitimate, nondiscriminatory interest". If there are convictions and there is a blanket no-convict policy, the provider must still be able to prove that such policy or practice is necessary to achieve a substantial, legitimate, nondiscriminatory interest. A housing provider that imposes a blanket prohibition on any personw ith any conviction record –no matter when the conviction occurred, what the underlying conduct entailed, or what the convicted person has done since then – will be unable to meet this burden If it is illegal to discriminate on the basis of past convictions, a landlord cannot be held liable for obeying the law. In short, "it depends (on minute details and whether the plaintiff's lawyer makes the necessary arguments): ask your attorney".
No landlord-tenant laws that I have ever seen impose an obligation on a landlord to give a point by point response to everything in an email from a tenant. However, a tenant probably has the right or obligation to provide a landlord with written notification of a problem requiring remedy. You might then be required by law to provide a specific reply within some time frame, for example "We will fix that tomorrow afternoon", or "We are not required to fix that": it would depend on the jurisdiction and the accusation. Some caution in how you respond is warranted, because your answers can be used against you in a court of law, thus you want to be sure that your response is not misleading, and that you don't accidentally promise to do something that you won't actually do. There is a concept of "adoptive admission", where silence can be used against you. A typical case is if Smith says to Jones "That was really cold-blooded, the way you murdered Thompson", and Jones does not respond to the accusation – that fact can be introduced as evidence, because there is an assumption that if Jones were really innocent, they would protest the accusation. I don't see any way for "failure to respond to everything" in this manner could constitute an adoptive admission – an "admission" means that you directly or indirectly indicate that you did a thing, which is not the same as ipso facto agreeing to something (for example, not replying to a statement "I'd like my rent reduced by $100 per month" is not an "adoptive agreement").
Can landlord backbill 4.5 years worth of utilities that were never billed to us bimonthly as directed in the lease? Yes, since the bimonthly billing issue appears to be within the LA statute of limitations for claims of breach of contract: 10 years (see here). But you might want to check the actual legislative language of the statute referred therein and the prior or consecutive ones --all pertaining to statutes of limitations-- so as to ascertain the accuracy of information in the first link (navigating through the bunch of LA two- or three-line statutes for this and that gets annoying). They are desperate to get me to move out since it is a rent-controlled unit and I feel like they have done this to cause issues and force me to default on rent. Is this a legal practice? I am not knowledgeable of state legislation particular to rent-controlled units, but I highly doubt it is lawful for them to proceed that way. Other details you describe reflect that the company has been --or is being-- malicious or grossly negligent. If so, strictly speaking, the company's conduct (1) ought to weaken its position or merits in trying to force you out, and (2) tends to contravene the contract law covenant of good faith and fair dealing (see below). If your lease mentions any statutes regarding rent-controlled units, you may want to search for case law at leagle.com to see how the statutes are applied. Without knowing the terms of your lease, I think your priority should at all times be the rent itself so as to avoid eviction. Does the "billing every two months" in the lease have any hold on this issue if they breached their own lease? Maybe not. The repeated, yet sole, failure to send you the bimonthly billings falls short of landlord's breach of contract. For your argument on breach of contract to prevail, you would have to prove that the landlord knowingly/deliberately let the water bills pile up prior to demanding you to pay everything at once. That would prove that the landlord is not meeting the covenant of good faith and fair dealing that is prerequisite in contract law.
The correct term for this insurance is personal liability insurance - it is neither compulsory nor common in common law jurisdictions. However, some aspects of it may be bundled with other insurances like homeowners, landlords and contents insurance. Liability for damage in common law flows either from a breach of contract or a tort. Of course, if you intentionally cause harm you have crossed the line from civil liability to criminality and no insurance will indemnify you. For your specific examples: [I]f, say, a candle falls over and I burn my flat? If your lease prohibited you from having open flames then this would be a clear breach of contract and you would have to pay for the damage to the flat (and your own property, of course). If your lease was silent on this, then you would be liable if you were negligent and each party would bear their own losses if you weren't (i.e. it was a pure "accident"). What if a flower pot falls from my windowsill and accidentally kills someone? The passerby has no action under contract as they don't have one. They can sue you, or the landlord, or the body corporate (or all three) for negligence - the landlord's and/or body corporate's insurance would respond and if it included a waiver of subrogation (most do), the insurer could not sue any of the other parties for their losses. What if my trolley bumps into an old lady at the supermarket and I break her hip? What if I walk on my friend's glasses and break them? You have no contract with either of these people so they cannot sue you under one. If they can prove negligence then you have to pay for the damage. If it is, instead a pure "accident" then they bear the cost. However, for the old lady, she is way more likely to sue the supermarket as they will have insurance. It is not as useful in the UK as it is in France due to the need for the plaintiff to prove a breach of contract or negligence. In the UK, you are not responsible for accidents you cause - only accidents you cause negligently.
If a contract does not say what one of the parties wishes it would say, before signing it they should renegotiate the lease. Once the parties have an agreement as witnessed by signatures, a party cannot change the terms of the contract by declaring that some provision of the lease is a "typo". If they want to renegotiate the terms of the contract after the fact, they can, if the other party is willing to give in on the particular point. So as it stands, it seems that the landlord is in breach of contract. This section of Maryland's landlord-tenant law is relevant to this situation. (b) In general. -- A tenant may deduct from rent due to a landlord the amount of payments made to a utility service provider for utility service if: (1) An oral or written lease for an affected dwelling unit requires the landlord to pay the utility bill; and (2) (i) The tenant pays all or part of the utility bill, including payments made on a new utility service account; or (ii) The tenant pays any security deposit required to obtain a new utility service account. (c) Waiver not permitted. -- A tenant's rights under this section may not be waived in any lease. There is no provision under the law whereby the landlord can be penalized for the inconvenience that you've suffered. This section of the public utilities law addresses the problem of the landlord's debt, in particular: (c) If utility service at an affected dwelling unit is subject to the threat of termination or actual termination, a tenant residing in the affected dwelling unit: (1) may apply for a new utility service account in the tenant's name; and (2) may not incur liability for charges due on the landlord's account. In particular, (d)(3) says A utility service provider may not refuse or otherwise condition a tenant's ability to establish a new utility service account in the tenant's name because of arrearages on the landlord's account. So the utility company is wrong, and so is the landlord.