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Will Gaston
Pro Member
  • Rental Property Investor
  • Columbia, SC
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My First Lawsuit: Will this Loophole Help or Hurt???

Will Gaston
Pro Member
  • Rental Property Investor
  • Columbia, SC
Posted Mar 22 2017, 10:20

All:

So ten years in and now I'm officially a landlord as I just got served with my first lawsuit. It's in magistrate's court and the tenant is asking for her last 6 months in back rent (~5k) as she says she has not been living there because she has deemed it unlivable. She is one of 5 college students living in my duplex. This is not an individual lease, but one that they are all 5 responsible for individually and collectively.

Her complaint stems from a pest control issue that began in late October of last year. She said that she was hearing noises in the wall and in the attic and claimed that it was "rats." The lease for the property states TWICE that the tenant is responsible for pest control. We let her know this, but, I try to be a reasonable human/landlord, so I sent a company over there and the tenant later emailed that the situation was resolved. 

Then in December she contacted us again and said that the sounds were back. We sent another pest control company over they could not find any evidence of an issue, but did say some of the house was inaccessible and they could not confirm of there were pests in those areas. Both the first and second companies baited for mice and none were found.

She kept hearing the noises and demanded that we cut portions out of her bedroom walls to inspect, which we refused. But I did have another guy come over with infrared technology to scan the walls. He also could not find anything.

Then last week it all blew up. She called to complain again and we sent the first company in to take a look at it. He confirmed that it was bats. He tried to remedy the situation and apparently trapped two of the bats inside the house. The tenants saw this and freaked out and I had to call a fourth company (who specializes in bats) to come over and take care of the bats, get the bats tested for rabies, deal with DHEC, etc.  This occurred on a Saturday morning at 7:30 and they were over there within one hour dealing it with it.

Everything with the house is fine now and nobody was harmed. Total costs for all of this is approximately $2,500 and roughly the same amount of grey hairs. 

So fast forward to today and that one tenant  (the other 4 are pretty reasonable) is suing me for the past 7 months in rent saying that she has been unable to live in her bedroom. Not sure if this is true or not, but can't prove it.

Like all landlords, I am biased and think she doesn't have a case for several reasons:

1) I have lots of documentation (emails, receipts, texts, etc) that demonstrate I was on this immediately. 

2) Twice in her lease it says that owner is not responsible for pest control. I did it anyway because I want to be reasonable.

3) The rent is for the entire property, not just for one bedroom. All other tenants have lived there the entire time.

4) A loophole: The tenant who is suing me never signed the lease. She was studying abroad when the other girls put the deposit down and she never ended up signing it. We knew she lived there and know she pays rent, but I forgot about her signing it as well until I just looked at the original lease.

Would a magistrate judge consider her a tenant even though she never signed the lease? Is this a good loophole to bring up? Can she sue for back rent when I have no written agreement with her in the first place?

Trying to decide what my best strategy is in the defense of this lawsuit. Which one of these 4 (if any) would you go with? 

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