I have a security deposit dispute. It is a sublease case. I do not know if laws regarding regular landlord-tenant disputes also apply to sublease cases. I shall highly appreciate if anyone can help me.
Here is the story.
My husband and I sublet a house from a professor at Cal when he was on leave in Europe. After we moved in, we had sent him several emails but he had never responded to us. These emails were about unpaid phone bills, unpaid heat & electricity bills, etc. Those bills were generated from the months that he had been living in the house before he left for another country.
One of his friends came over to the house to pick up his mails once for a while. So I told her about the unpaid bills. We also asked her about the running heater that we had no idea how to turn off. The heater had been running since he left. After he left for one month, my husband and I moved in. Therefore, in between nobody took care of the heater. The lady did not understand how to turn off the heater, so she told us she was gonna let the professor know. She was also surprised to find that the professor could be so irresponsible because from her experience of being friend with him, he was responsible. No matter how, the bills were finally paid, but we had never heard anything from him regarding the heater.
More than two months after we moved in, we finally found the switcher of the heater under the heater. We turned it off.
About one week before our sublease ended, we finally received one email from the professor. He told us in the email he was to arrive in CA on the date our sublease was to end. He also asked us to leave our contact numbers and address to him, and told us he was to give us his new phone number once he got one in the U.S. We soon replied and told him our cell phone numbers (which he already had had). In the next few days after we moved out, we sent him several emails and asked about the inspection and the security deposit. He never replied. He also did not give us him new phone numbers as he promised. So we had no ways to contact him except of keeping sending emails. We got no responses at all.
Two months had passed. We had received no phone calls, no itemized statement regarding damages, or returned security deposit. It had been the time my husband was to move to another state, and I was planning a research trip to another country. We had no more time to waste.
Therefore, although we had been unwilling to go to his house without invitation, we really had to. So, last Wednesday, we went to his house to ring his door. When he saw us, we politely introduced ourselves and sincerely apologized for showing up like this. Unexpectedly, he was VERY MAD at us, telling us he was exhausted and we were letting his dinner become cold. He also started complaining about the showerhead which we though had been in bad condition before we moved in. However, we agreed to pay for the replacement of the showerhead, a thing that he had already done without letting us know. He also told us he was too tired to talk about the deposit and wanted me to go to his office the next day.
When I went to his office the next day, he was still not in good attitude. He started complaining that we inappropriately used the table and had created all of the watermarks on the coffee table. He wanted to replace the table at our cost. My husband and I disagree. We sent him an email telling him there had been watermarks on the table before we moved in. He soon replied saying that there was only one and it was unclear. Not only his argument is inconsistent, but has him lived there for two months since we moved out. We could hardly accept the cost of the table replacement.
Then we told him about the heater and the cost generated from the running heater which generated heat that we did not need. We also told him we got no response from him regarding the heater and it’s all by ourselves to figure out a way to turn it off. He then blamed us that our turning off the heater would have damaged the connection. And he will bill us for it if the heater is damaged.
We feel he is just making up new things to hold our deposit longer. So we told him we want to have third-party mediation. He told us that if this is really something we want to do he will do it, but only after 1.5 months later, the time when I will have left this country without a plan to come back. In fact, he has known from the very beginning when we signed the lease that I am here only for a short period of time and by mid-Oct I will leave for good. We feel he has no willingness to resolve the dispute at all.
Would anybody suggest me what to do? We would like to bring him to the small claims court. Can my husband go alone? My husband is in another state though.
Thank you very much!
cherylite

