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My old landlord from an apartment I had a couple years back is threatening to sue me over unpaid rent. My boyfriend and I broke the lease and moved out without giving notice. This is true. BUT the conditions were unlivable. Our neighbour was super noisy and kept us up all night. The apartment was in a dangerous neighbourhood. My boyfriend's Mom gave us the down payment for a house and got it for us in her name (because we have not so great credit due to student loans) so we decided it was best for us to move and plus I was pregnant at the time. We told our landlord we wanted to break our lease and why, and he said we couldn't without paying several months of rent and I don't think that's right! Long story short, can he even take us to court or can we just ignore him?
You can just ignore him...until he sees you in court. You loose...
Koale
My poor choice of words. LL should have began legal proceedings much sooner IMO, although apparently not relevant.
Landlord could have started legal proceeding earlier but it took a while to locate them. In some places that will slow the SOL clock, depending on the circumstances. OP brace yourself to pay, your old landlord not only can take you to court but will probably win. You might consider offering a settlement.
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Our neighbour was super noisy and kept us up all night. The apartment was in a dangerous neighbourhood.
Neither of which are your landlord's problems.
Quote:
We told our landlord we wanted to break our lease and why, and he said we couldn't without paying several months of rent and I don't think that's right!
If you break your lease in the middle of it, you are on the hook for rent until the unit is re-rented. Maybe that's a month, maybe it's six months.
You're free to ignore this, but if everything is as you say it is, it's an easy slam dunk victory for the landlord. It's not even a gray area. It's in your best interest to get this worked out with the landlord before he takes you to court. Either way you're going to have to pay him, and if you go to court you're going to wind up with a judgement on your record that will show up on background checks.
There is a fairly short statue of limitations in small claims court, but there are other venues to use for a lawsuit that have a much longer time limit to file a lawsuit. That costs a lot more, both for the landlord and the tenant. If the tenant loses, the tenant will have to pay what is owed, pay their own lawyer, and pay the landlord's lawyer.
I suggest that OP make arrangements to pay the debt instead of waiting for it to get to court. That will be a lot cheaper and a lot less stressful.
There is a fairly short statue of limitations in small claims court
This varies greatly from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Also, if the OP intentionally attempted to hide their location from the landlord for the purposes of not being able to be served (I'd be money this is the case) then a judge may ignore the statute of limitations, even if it had expired.
This varies greatly from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Also, if the OP intentionally attempted to hide their location from the landlord for the purposes of not being able to be served (I'd be money this is the case) then a judge may ignore the statute of limitations, even if it had expired.
Somehow I think you are right about the tenant attempting to hide. I am not a lawyer so all I'll say is that I would expect tenant hiding to avoid legal service might be a good reason to extend the SOL.
I also suspect this would kick it up to a higher court, rather than small claims. In some jurisdictions small claims court is merely a jerk dressed in a black robe, having a law degree and a coin to flip. In other words, capricious.
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