Landlord Tenant Dispute: Security Deposit Return and Wear Tear Law

[00:00:01]these are the plaintiffs thomas and heather corrado thomas says their former landlord's being outrageous with his claims of damages now that they've moved out and they're not gonna stand by and let him get away with it everything this guy's claiming is normal wear and tear the judge will see through the defendant's claims like the swiss cheese they are and award them the four thousand five hundred dollars they're seeking today this is the defendant anthony monty he says the plaintiffs caused him over ten thousand dollars in damages for crying out loud now they have the gall to sue him in court today for the return of security ha that's funny because he's been a landlord for over 20 years and knows exactly what he's doing thank you very much he's accused of failing to return monies oh [Music] all parties these are iranians welcome back to the people's court next case in the dock at the plaintiffs say their rex landlord is screwing them over by deducting money from their security for normal wear and tear but the defendant says the plaintiffs caused more than 10 grand in damages it's the case of it was wear and tear we swear thank you that's all right thomas corrado and heather corrado yes you are suing your former landlord anthony monty for 4 500 double your security deposit because he has not returned it for you and according to you is wrongfully withholding it um let me hear from you all right uh i mean did you live there uh we moved in july of 2013 and moved out 28 october 28th of 18. okay and um during the time that you lived there did you guys have like a normal pleasant relationship or was it wasn't that bad all right you decided to move out why uh we bought a house okay good for you thank you so you move out and uh what happens do you guys have a walk through uh i i thought we were going to and then i text him where we're going to meet up and he was in south carolina or north carolina one of the carolinas and he said the same to you yeah they're close enough to dickson told me he gave me a text to send well he gave i guess the new tenants my number to meet up with they just gave the keys to them or whatever all right so at some point do you talk to them and say hey i'd like to say how much is the security deposit in play 2 250 yeah all right so at some point do you talk to him and say what's up yeah i reached out uh and then he comes up with all these charges uh flooring painting electrician do you have pictures of how you left the place yeah video of it okay you need it up there you just have to hit the button lots of marks on the walls guys those are so many scuffs on the walls i mean how many kids you got we have four what's that there's a litter of how many over there like somebody say three or four there's two sets of twins yeah wait these are two sets of twins yes oh i love it hold on move to the side i gotta see okay i think i know which ones are twins okay um how cool all right we have quadruplets at the people's court very cool two people who met here and had quadruplets no less let me hand the floor over to you what's the problem why won't you give these people back their money well um i've submitted some pictures myself those pictures were taken a day after they left there's a lot of damage let's look at the pictures so in this picture you're showing me all of the scuff mark where people doing like riding skateboards on the walls of your i think so what is that i can't tell you which i have to look uh okay i'm gonna if you can't see what i'm showing you i want you to walk up to the tv because i really want you to answer just visualize what room this was um that's the dining that's the dining room so exactly this is what it was tight surfaces so like i'm looking at the wall what is that that looks like where like the kids probably put put their bikes when they had to bring them in okay and then what did the kids do on this wall what's it going to be all the kids we're going to blame all this on the kids i mean it i don't like there is uh you would agree you didn't rent it that way right no but it's paint you know like i'm not saying that you know the walls were spotless we were there five years you know so i understand and there's there's something called normal wear and tear and then there's this yeah that's not normal wear and tear um i'll be honest with you my house doesn't look like this and i've been living there more than five years you see what i'm saying i do understand okay okay what's that who knows that's a scuff mark it looks like from like a bed or something it looks again like some of it's scuff marks from furniture and stuff you know something but a lot of it's not a lot of it's a lot of other stuff when they had to bring their bikes up because we yeah some of it's higher up than a bike i don't even know how what was here i guess a tv that was i think my daughter's bedroom wall yes which daughter both of them okay what is this that's the four things where our bed was just from moving it like you know it just it scrapes you know the floor doesn't really stay rough those are gouges in the floor it's scratched ooh what happened in the bathroom that's what happened right now that's the tile that's not just grout no no broken tile i and we have a message from him i let him know now when you walk on this tile it rocks back and forth so the tile cracked after a while i'm kind of like the floor it looks a little cheap this is just regular ceramic tile it's and it was not level so when you walk on it constantly with honey people let me just tell you where someone dropped something nobody dropped anything yeah right there where the where the where the spider point is that's where someone dropped something i don't know that anybody dropped it well i'm telling you you don't know but you know who does know i know that someone dropped something all right what is this what is this here what happened there that is actually where our which of your kids put a fork in that electrical thing nobody did actually no but what is that really that was um that's the only outlet that i knew that there was something wrong with we had a one of those faux fireplaces plugged in there that you know whatever and we used it here and there that's it but you never saw never had anything like no inkling until we were actually moving that day so we didn't know that that was you what is this that is um our closet the only thing what's this that's the only condition they left the stove in the pan a lasagna or something still sitting there there's apparently on the bottom i actually left stuff that i there that i did not know that i left there there was probably a whole cabinet because we were rushing to get out okay but why were you rushing why don't you just plan be a better planner there's i just didn't have time it's inside the cabinets so it's one of the many cabinets just left like that that's the hole in the floor uh did you put this flooring in i yeah i installed that in 2005.

[00:07:05]2005. yep same thing with the ceramic floor a really long time ago that's what i'm saying like you can't expect it i got it i got it i got it okay uh not great though not great um so you are laying claim to the security deposit based on uh several things let's go over your things i had to paint the entire unit show tell me how that cost you 2 253 and 90 cents did you end up doing that physically yourself or did you have two other people working with me i'm a contractor i've been a contractor for 32 years okay do you have the receipts for the materials no i don't i your honor dude you're going to keep the people's security pods you got to keep receipts your honor we're in the middle of moving to north carolina and i've packed everything up and a lot of stuff is you know for keep the stuff that's contentious like if you're gonna like throw out like the old clothes the t-shirts from hair bands no don't throw those out those are all coming back for a lot of money i know believe me um but but the stuff where you kept the guy's security deposit he's probably angry that stuff don't throw up but in any event all right um there's some serious painting and it's not if it was that you would have done it um there's some serious damaging that there's some serious filling in of holes there's some serious stuff going on can i add one thing yeah you haven't even talked every state has different um laws about uh that govern how security deposits have to be held how security deposits have to be returned how a security deposit could be kept so is it possible that somebody can move into an apartment with four kids and they're not be damaged no way kids have accidents and kids are messy it is what it is is it possible that kids don't cause damage uh not at all huh not at all possible what do you say um they're gonna cause damage for sure no matter what no matter what ten thousand dollars worth i don't know about ten thousand dollars right there we'll find out going inside the courtroom you live in one of those states where when the landlord wrongfully withholds any money you can sue for double as you know because you have sued for double and the penalty is if you don't send the letter and you know do the what you're supposed to do and send the itemized list which apparently you didn't right i didn't have a forwarding address i gave them that address stop it if you sent it to the same address it would have been we have a text message oh i so don't care okay if you don't the penalty is that you get to sue for double the amount roughly withheld which you have done so you have taken advantage of of what you get to take advantage of by virtue of the fact that he didn't send it but really i have one thing to decide here okay and it's whether or not the damages that i do see i agree with you that there are several things that he's talking about that just go overboard but whether the damages that i do see okay would amount fairly because you can't i can't penalize him because he's a contractor but i also can't i don't want i don't want to be a bonanza for him but i'm also not going to penalize him because he's a contractor but the question is does the damage just to the walls man um you know to to having to paint the entire how many bedrooms is this house it's it's two bedrooms with a loft the loft is really large is it a house or a condo it's a condo it's three stories um you know if you damage a place you're gonna have to pay for the damages you know this is a cost of doing business when you're raising a lot of people in a house and you've got a lot going on you know it looks like you're doing a great job you've got four beautiful healthy kids who seem very engaged because they're all here and um you know but it's chaotic it's messy i raised three of my own and the best advice anybody ever gave me when i had my first baby was my father-in-law who said everything wipes just don't panic about everything you got as some as when you are a mother for a while when you're a father for a while you start to realize i can live with that chaos i can live with this chaos i can you know this isn't worth the battle it's more important that they do their school where they do this you know all the things and it's one point that we save up money and invest in a house all these things are beautiful things but you left the house a wreck for the guy and see it's supposed to be handed back the way it was handed to you and i really cannot say that what i see in damage is less than the two thousand two hundred and fifty dollars i just can't and i'm ruling in this case in favor of the defendant thank you your honor well the plaintiffs have failed in their effort to get that security deposit back and doubled at that i i think you would have to admit if you looked at the pictures that he had that it looked like there was a lot of damage there we were there five years i know four kids so and it was a small contained area we did the best that we could but what do you think of the picture would you agree um it looked pretty bad i mean i believe somebody moved in a couple weeks after we moved out so it could have been that bad i'm sorry true you lost your case not much we can do about it okay thank you here comes mr montay you uh you proved your case to the judge she's okay how you feel i feel all right i mean it's you know i i don't like doing that stuff to people but you know i know you got four kids we all got kids you got to take care of your stuff man even you're renting something from somebody you got to take care of your stuff you know that's my party obviously they didn't do a very good job of cleaning yeah that is what it is yep so well congratulations thank you good for you thank you very very much harvey you saw the pictures what do you think doug i mean here's the deal that in this state the state we're talking about here um you can get double the damages for money wrongfully withheld by a landlord there are some states where you can actually get three times in some states where they don't double or triple it at all so what you should do is go online find out what law applies to you