Legal Question in Landlord & Tenant Law in Alabama

Lease

We had a lease for 6 months and my husband got transfered back to his job in Massachusetts. Our lease started in Dec. 1, 2002 and was suppose to end in May 31, 2003. We talked to the property manager to see what our options where and she said, get me a letter of job transfer and that will get you out of you lease. We did that, and she stated we where all set. We then left to go back to Massachusetts. I then recieved a letter that she was sorry to mislead us that the job transfer clause was not in our lease that it was in the old lease. she then stated we loss our deposit and was charged a ''insufficient notice'' fee of $430.00. My vice is that we where misled and I feel we should not have to pay for her error. And that we should be entitled to our Deposit. It was a 300.00 deposit. 100.00 for the apartment and 200 for a pet deposit. I am right on this and do I have any chance of winning. I would have stayed at the apartment and rode out the lease and my husband would have gone back home and lived with family for the time. I feel that we are being taken advantage of for her mistake. Please help for Massachusetts.


Asked on 4/14/03, 7:56 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys
Robert Kreitlein Robert Kreitlein, Attorney at Law

Re: Lease

Yes, you are right. There are concepts in contract law called quasi-contract and promissory estoppel. In layman's terms, what these concepts mean is that where someone has made you a promise, and you relied on that promise to your detriment, a contract will be deemed to have been created and the party causing the trouble will be prohibited from denying that there was no contract. Long story short, you could have done things differently if you had not been misled. I believe you probably have a cause of action on the quasi-contract/promissory estoppel claim as well as possibly fraud. Something like this may be able to be corrected with just a letter, though. I don't imagine they will want to pay an attorney to defend a claim for $300. If you feel like you need an attorney to write a letter to them, shoot me an email and I will see what I can do.

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Answered on 4/15/03, 11:49 am


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