Renters rights violated, dog injured (agent, landlord, property, claim)

[septpil]

I was hoping someone could help shed some light regarding my rights as a renter. My boyfriend and I just moved into a new apartment complex just over a week ago. We have a dog in our home, as our landlord is completely aware of. When we signed our contract, we were very specific about requiring us to be home before any maintence crew or anyone else was allowed inside our apartment. In our contract it says we must be contacted and if we don't approve for them to go in, they must wait until we are home to enter. Now, we had a number of maintence issues upon move in that we put work orders in for. One of those issues was a large number of ants and other bugs, so the landlord said they would send an exterminator on Wednesday. They had also said they were sending a maintence crew Monday, and we waited all day and they never came. My boyfriend works very close to home and can be there within 5 minutes of a phone call. Wednesday came and we were both at work and neither of us received a phone call. My boyfriend came home to find our dog with a bloody gash on the back of his neck (not a huge gash but he discovered it when giving our dog a bath, he touched his neck and the dog cried. ) as well as huge pee puddles all over the apartment. Our dog has never once peed in the house before, and we had let him out plenty of times to relieve himself that day. The only reason he would have peed that many times in the house is if he was in extreme distress. He is a very friendly dog, but was also abused by prior owners so he gets nervous around strange men.

We spoke to the property manager and they said they hire a third party company for extermination and that they don't usually call first. Had we known this, one of us would have been home all day. The landlord said they would look into it, but when they found out that we called the company to look into as well, they accused us of becoming hostile and said that "it's the word of a dog against the word of a company. You will probably never find out what happened". We are not hostile people at all. We are just upset that something happened to our dog and it would never had happened had we been notified like our contract says we would be. What rights do I have? How can I fight this without having then evict us? We love our new place but to me this is very unacceptable.

[Silverfall]

Why don't you try and negotiate with the landlord to let you set up the appointments yourself. Just have him give you a list of his acceptable contractors and you set the appointments. That way communication is clear between you and the contractors.

[mls012]

I don't think you can do anything about this, unfortunately. It doesn't sound like you can prove who was in your home and what actually took place. If you actually like living there and don't want to start issues, your gonna have to just drop it and figure out a way to handle this moving forward. If you call for service in the future and are told what day to expect someone- sounds like you'll need to be there all day or get one of those nanny cameras so you can keep an eye on things remotely.


Sorry to hear this happened. If this happened to my dog, I'd be very upset too!

[Rabrrita]

Have the dog treated by the vet.
Submit the bill to your landlord for repayment.
Send them a second letter detailing the lease provision of being notified before entry.

As an FYI, your landlord is partially correct, when you bypassed the landlord and went straight to the private contractor, you made a big mistake as your relationship is with the landlord. Whomever they hire is acting as their agent so the landlord was the only one you should have been communicating with. They may try using this as a reason not to reimburse you for the claim.

[Mr_Geek]

Buy some cheap security cameras off Amazon. They can be had for cheap and would have told quite the story in this case.

Technically they did notify you before entry if I'm reading this correctly. They just didn't call when they arrived. I'm guessing this was something they try to accommodate to be nice but isn't something they must do. I have a cat that is an escape artist so I like to be home when people come in and I've noticed they rarely call when they say they will. They always do give the appropriate notice though.

[bbronston]

Since one of you can be there in very short order, get a Ring video doorbell or something similar. You'll know when someone comes to the door and you can instruct them to wait until you arrive. Plus, it will video them and record if they go in without permission.