Boards
legal bods of DiS, out of interest, what do you make of this...
basically my cousin is a full time nurse and was in a flatshare with a guy whose parents own the flat. the guy dealt with the rent/deposit, etc, so we'll call him Acting Landlord (AL). a couple of weeks ago my cuz was due to be up early doors for a trip to ireland when AL came back with a load of friends at 4am and started partying hard, smoking weed, etcetera and so forth. my cuz asked them to stop smoking weed and keep the noise down (her uniform was drying on a rail in the living room and was getting the stink all over it - she is a nurse, could get fired, etc). she'd been living there for a couple of months and had never been informed by AL that he was prone to letting people light up in a non-smoking flat, etc. so his friends became really abusive and aggressive, twice tried to force their way into her room (the first time catching her half-nude while she changed to leave), and used the terms 'fucking bitch' and 'psycho bitch' to refer to her when she came out and told them to get out of her private space. AL was seen giggling and when she asked him to control his friends he said, 'i can't, they're adults.' they continued harassing her, she got really scared (due to some nasty stuff which happened last year with a bunch of drunken idiots) and as a result she called me and asked if she could crash with us. on her way out AL said 'consider this your months notice'.
we discussed her living arrangements and she concluded that even if AL's eviction was a heat of the moment thing, she would be unable to continue living in the flat because of their incompatibility as flatmates and the fear she felt regarding his friends and AL's untrustworthiness. she didn't end up going to ireland as we helped her move her stuff out the day after the initial incident (so this would have been the saturday). that day, she asked him when he felt he could return the deposit and he promised her he would return it by monday 23rd july (me and my gf were there when he said this). on inspecting her room we found beer cans, trash, cigarette butts, roaches, etc, and he admitted he had allowed his friends to go into her room and sleep off their night while she had been at ours. anyway, monday came and went with no payment. she sent him an email very politely asking what the plan was and he said that because she had left the property without giving notice (!!!) he didn't have to pay her anything, but he would anyway because he had decided to "be the adult in the situation" (exact words). the email correspondence has escalated and now he's becoming very nasty and bitchy. over the last few weeks he's said the following:
1) he had to have the room deep-cleaned because of the mess and this is somehow my cousin's fault, so he's taking sixty pounds off the refund.
2) he doesn't have to pay anything because my cousin chose to leave.
3) his parents have changed their phone number and he never informed her of this, nor will he give her the new numbers despite her seven or eight requests for it.
4) he won't provide proof he's had to hire a cleaning crew, nor will he provide proof he did it within a reasonable timeframe after she'd left.
5) he now wants to give her a cheque and wants her new address so he can post it and "track it for his own peace of mind". this despite the fact that his work involves a lot of posting of goods and he's proud of being terrible at it. also, from the emails my cuz has shown me, his state of mind is so unstable that i'm really not comfortable with him knowing where i live.
6) he's also saying that he still doesn't have a flatmate and so can't give her the full money back on august 17th (i'm fairly sure this is fucked).
7) she went to the police after she left the first day to ask if they could return with her to the flat so she could collect some stuff (scared as she was of a possibly violent outcome). obviously, the police politely refused because they are the police ('we could make the situation worse' is what they said). but they did at least log her complaint and gave her a reference number or whatever.
8) AL is now saying he'll get his parents to call my cousin before friday.
should she just lawyer up and take his ass to court? or should she at least give him the benefit of the doubt and see what happens on friday?
also, share your stories of terrible landlords, let's all have a good bitch.