Posted by satori on February 24, 1999 at 21:58:06:
In Reply to: Broken pipes, mice and an unresponsive NYC landlord posted by Dean on February 24, 1999 at 21:47:34:
Well if you were injured as you said and you have the medical records, I would
walk right into a lawyers office with your documents. i was able to get
$20.000 in damages from the insurance company of a corporation that
handled the policy of the company i had a complaint against. i n fact if I was
you I would run to a laywers office. remember the person that got millions
in a civil suit when being burned by a a cup of Mcdonalds coffee. all,
housing owners have insurance.
: Please stick with us--this is a long, but interesting, explanation of a
: crazy situation. We are sub-leasing a co-op apartment. The "landlord" in
: this case refers to the management company that leases the apartment from
: the co-op and to us. We pay our rent directly to them and they contract
: their own team to make repairs.
: On a Sunday morning this past January, I awoke to boiling hot water gushing
: from the pipe beneath my kitchen sink. The pipe had broken off from its
: connection, and, despite my best efforts to hold it back in place for the
: better part of an hour (my wife was attempting to locate the super or the
: management company), eventually the water scalded me and I had to let go.
: Before the super was finally located, about 1.5 inches of steaming water
: had flooded my living room. Several things were damaged.
: Once the super was able to turn off the water, he took one look under the
: sink and told us that the pipe had been soldered on poorly. The plumber
: sent in for the repair the next day said the same thing.
: Apparantly, the poor plumbing job was put in place over the summer, after
: I contacted the landlord to come in and investigate what I suspected to be
: holes behind the sink cabinet. Between November 1997 and July 1998, my wife\
: and I caught about 10 mice. After repeated phone calls, our landlord
: finally sent someone out to fill up all of the holes. They came while we
: were at work, and while the cabinet was pulled out, they reworked some of
: the plumbing without telling us.
: When the plumber came in January to fix the bad soldering job and pulled
: out the cabinet, I was horrified to find many, many holes behind the sink.
: The landlord had, in fact lied to us and not fixed the wall in the summer
: as they claimed. This explains why we continued to have mice problems,
: at least 6 more since the July "repair". (We took video and photos of the
: holes.)
: My wife took the day off of work after that to ensure that the holes were
: filled (by the building super, not the landlord's people). Once we were
: finally able to contact someone in the landlord's office, we were told to
: estimate our damages and send them in. Our estimate came to approx. $3000.
: Since then, it has been a struggle to get them to call us back. We did not
: pay February rent ($1450). Finally, two weeks ago, someone at the office
: called and left a message on our answering service that he was authorized
: to offer us $1500 remuneration and that he was sending us a letter to that
: effect. We never recieved the letter and continued phone messages to them
: have gone unanswered.
: At this point we are unsure as to what to do. Today I received notice in
: the mail that they would not be renewing our lease at the end of June. Not
: a problem, since we are planning on moving out of state mid-May. How
: do we go about breaking our lease in all this mess? Should we continue to
: withold rent? Should we take them to court?
: Thanks so much in advance for sticking with me through this long e-mail.
: Any advice/info is appreciated.
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