Stress Reliever

Haven't blogged in a while, mostly due to the fact that I've been too distracted to think about writing.  My husband and I were sued in small claims court for breaking a lease just over a year ago, something we felt very justified about doing.  The landlord had even left a voice message the day after I had declared my intentions to move, and told me to do that very thing.  The day after we moved, however, we received a message from him saying that he had told us to move, yes, but he had never said he was letting us out of our lease, so pay up.  We felt cheated about all of this, like he had deliberately deceived us about everything up to this point, and this latest message was no exception.

So we went to court, well-prepared, found child care for our son for the morning, made sure he got to school okay, found time off work for my husband during a busy time, and showed up early.  But the plaintiff never showed up.  It's rotten, but he never has to show reason why he didn't, but if we had missed our court date, we would have lost our case immediately.  His case was simply dismissed "without prejudice" so he could file again.  And that he did.

So we prepare again, find child care, go to court early, and wait.  This time the plaintiff shows up.    Nerves begin.  I start shaking.  Hoping it will all turn out okay.  This time we had also filed a counter-claim, which we figured we had good reason to.  But the judge saw otherwise.  He didn't see that our reasons for moving, or that the landlord's obvious deceit had been all that serious.  So we lost our claim.  Now I am nervous.  What if we have to pay this guy even MORE money?  He already has our security deposit of one month's rent, and an extra month's rent we paid while a lawyer reviewed our case.  We didn't feel like he should get one more dime from us.  Not one more cent.

The judge asked him if he had advertised the apartment for rent anywhere, in the paper, on the internet, with a rental agency . . .  The landlord said he hadn't, but he had a sign out front!  It had a phone number, where anyone who saw it could call and someone would answer, he asserted.  Wow.  I'm underwhelmed.  Luckily, the judge was, too, and said even though we were liable for the rent, the landlord had to make reasonable efforts to rent the place and limit his damages.  He had not.  So 2 month's rent was reasonable for him to have received from us, and that was all we owed!  So we didn't need to pay him any more money!!!  Woohoo!!

So even though we lost our counter-claim, it was a win for us, as far as we were concerned.  We just didn't want to pay more money to him after all we had been through.  And that's just what happened.  It's hard to believe after months of stressing over this, that it's finally over!!  We can relax a bit, and hopefully enjoy living here now, as much as I can anyway. 

And that's the basic outline of what happened.  That's probably all I'll write about the whole debacle since I'm sick of thinking about it.  Time to move on.  :)