Legal Question in Landlord & Tenant Law in Florida

Good evening,

I�m hoping to get some legal advice in terms of a landlord/tenant situation. I�m wondering if I would have a case if I took my landlord to court. Can you please help me determine this?

It all started a few days before I was due to leave the apartment. I noticed the door to the entrance of the apartment was getting very hard to pull open and close. It was as if there was some type of obstruction but there really was not. I informed my landlord through e-mail instead of texting or calling her as usual because I was very busy packing, and getting my affairs in order to move to Tallahassee, FL which is a 4 hour drive from Tampa, FL.

My father and I had cleaned the apartment very thoroughly the day before we left. It was spotless. We were supposed to conduct a walk-through on the very last day of my lease, which was 1/4/15 but she ended up texting me 5 minutes before our meet time and asked to cancel the appointment and asked that I mail her the house and mailbox keys.

The very next day, I received missed calls from her. I called her back and she automatically told me that she was very disappointed in the damage to the apartment. I was flabbergasted as I left the apartment in perfect condition and I put down a security deposit of $775 and was expecting to receive it back. She told me that there had been a leak from the refrigerator (which also happened to be beside the door) and that it had caused the doorframe to expand, which was why I had a hard time opening/closing the door.

5 weeks before I left, the old refrigerator was going bad. My icecream was melting in the freezer and things were not kept as cool as they should have been. She purchased a new refrigerator and had HH Greg install it. I was there when the technician installed the refrigerator and there was no mold on the walls. In fact, I mopped the tile where the old refrigerator was before they installed the new refrigerator. Apparently, the technician must have done something to the water line that connected from the old refrigerator to the pipes when he was taking it out (the new refrigerator did not have an icemaker).

She was trying to tell me that this was tenant neglect because I did not inform her of the leak right away. She also sent me pictures of the mold that was on the wall beside and behind the refrigerator (areas I could not see due to the size of the refrigerator � come on, what person moves their refrigerator on a regular basis?). She said that she was told from the condo association that from the looks of the wall and the mold, that the leak must have been going on for months. This was not so as just 5 weeks prior, I cleaned behind that area when the technician took the old refrigerator out and I did not see any mold.

I asked her how I could inform her of something I did not notice and she tried saying that the leak was very obvious. There was no water leaking from the inside of the apartment whatsoever. However, there was a little puddle next to the doorframe on the outside of the apartment. I was told that anything on the outside of the apartment was taken care of by the property managers of the complex and not the landlords. I did not even think it was anything to worry about because there was always puddles of water on the floor in between my apartment and the stairwell. I never thought anything of it. I never thought it was due to a supposed leak.

In any case, she is trying to say that it was tenant neglect and is not only keeping my security deposit, but is going to bill me for the extra repairs of the door and the plumbing. Do you think that I could have a chance of winning this case if I took her to court?

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