Ex-Roommate Issues with Utilities and Security Deposit

[evilcomma]

My question involves a roommate in the State of: New York.

I am currently in California for an internship but I resided in NYC for the last few years. My last roommate gave me a lot of problems. He and his significant other would fight a lot and call the cops on each other in the middle of the night, waking me up, so I was glad to get out of the situation.

I didn't have a lot of time before our move out date, due to work and being out of the country for a month, so I hastily packed up (most of my things) and shipped them back home. However, I left a few items such as the cable box which I asked him to return.

Part I
I asked him about the security deposit and I have the feeling he might have taken all of mine back. My security deposit was $900 and though I hadn't painted the walls back to white (something that I was never told to do), I have a feeling that the cleaning and painting services didn't equal $900 and he might have taken the rest of the money back as "compensation" that he felt was owed to him. I am guessing I need to call the leasing office to see what is going on and how much money was actually refunded, but what can I do if it turns out he kept the money?

Part II
Recently, I've been getting calls from a debt collector about the cable box not being returned, saying that I owe Cablevision over $300. For an unpaid intern, this is a lot of money and after numerous phone calls, texts, emails, I finally heard back from my ex-roommate who said he never returned it because he didn't know what to do with it. I have a Facebook message dated August 28th, asking him to return it and even providing him with the address to ship it.

Part III
In addition to all that bullshit, he hasn't paid me for his half of the utility bills since November of 2009, and we lived there from August 2009 to August 2010. We never had any sort of written roommate agreement, but it was orally agreed that we would split the utilities (gas, heat, electricity, internet+cable) evenly.

So my question is how much of a case do I have if I wanted to take him to small claims court? I'd estimate my losses right now as to being about a little less than $1500.

Thanks all.

[Mr. Knowitall]

By "roommate" you mean that you were his subtenant, such that he was your landlord? If so, he was obligated to comply with New York's security deposit laws (and any applicable NYC ordinances) in relation to the return of your security deposit. If not, the security deposit issue is between you and the actual landlord.

Has your ex-roommate now returned the cable box?

If you had a history of splitting the utility bills followed by his failure to contribute, that's a decent prima facie case for small claims court. Do you have any documentation of your attempting to charge him for the subsequent bills and of his responses to your demands? Because if there's nothing, he could counter that you changed your agreement and the lack of a record could lend credence to such a claim.