Can I go to small claims court to sue my landlord for not giving me back my deposit since we had bed bugs?

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Can I go to small claims court to sue my landlord for not giving me back my deposit since we had bed bugs?

Asked on October 3, 2012 under Real Estate Law, Hawaii

Answers:

SJZ, Member, New York Bar / FreeAdvice Contributing Attorney

Answered 11 years ago | Contributor

There is no enough information in your question to truly answer it, since you do not state under what circumstances you are seeking the return of your deposit. As general principles:

1) If you tried to terminate your tenancy early due to bedbugs, the issue will be whether the termination was proper. Having bedbugs, by itself, would not allow a tenant to terminate his/her tenancy; to lawfully terminate the tenancy, the  infestation would have to be bad enough to make the premises uninhabitable to a reasonable person, and the landlord must have failed to take steps to address it after both notice of the problem and a reasonable time to act. If any of these conditons were not met, your termination was unlawful and the landlord may withhold or keep your deposit to pay for the rent you should have paid.

2) If you're talking about at the end of your tenancy (e.g. at lease expiration), then the landlord may only keep your deposit to pay for rent you failed to pay or for damage you did to the unit. However, if there was unpaid rent or damage, the landlord may keep part or all of the deposit as compensation even if at some point there were bedbugs.


IMPORTANT NOTICE: The Answer(s) provided above are for general information only. The attorney providing the answer was not serving as the attorney for the person submitting the question or in any attorney-client relationship with such person. Laws may vary from state to state, and sometimes change. Tiny variations in the facts, or a fact not set forth in a question, often can change a legal outcome or an attorney's conclusion. Although AttorneyPages.com has verified the attorney was admitted to practice law in at least one jurisdiction, he or she may not be authorized to practice law in the jurisdiction referred to in the question, nor is he or she necessarily experienced in the area of the law involved. Unlike the information in the Answer(s) above, upon which you should NOT rely, for personal advice you can rely upon we suggest you retain an attorney to represent you.

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