My question involves defamation in the state of: Oregon
Three of my friends and I moved into a house last year, and paid a security deposit. Once the lease ended, a friend and I moved out leaving two others in the house. We left on good terms, and didn't think to take pictures of the house cause it was left quite clean. My friend and I (who are moving out), asked for our share of the deposit back, but one of the people staying said that she needed to keep it because of the extraordinary damages that we caused (which isn't true, she has no proof cause we didn't). She told our landlord that we left the house trashed and horrible. The landlord, who never bothered to look at the house, told her to charge us for everything that we caused. Since the lease wasn't up yet, my parents asked the landlord if we could just go clean what she wanted. The landlord said that it must be professionally cleaned. However, when we asked how much it would cost to get the place cleaned, the roommate that claimed she had to take money for trash pick-up, carpet cleaning, and "us being bad roommates". Also, we just found out that she is cleaning it herself, no professionals. We wanna take this to a small claims court, but don't even know where to start. Do we sue the roommate for withholding our deposit and lying, or the landlord because she doesn't know how to do her job?

