Legal Question in Landlord & Tenant Law in California

1) We rented apartment for 6 months in North Cal & then moved to South Cal. The day prior to our move out the manager & maintenance guy visited us & saw that everything is ok. They didn't sign anything confirming it though.

After ~ 2 weeks I called them to ask how much will be deducted from our security deposit (as we agreed not to clean the carpet & they told us it's about $80 to do it so that's ok.We cleaned everything else very thoroughly)

The manager told me about ~$700(!), $50 of which was for some kind of urine inspection & ~$350 for carpet replacement in all apartment. They told me that carpet is 48 months old & that's it turned out quite cheap for us to replace it & that it's their policy to replace it in the whole apartment.

I checked the agreement & it turned out to be true abouth replacing the whole thing, but no

words like "Resident shall be charged for the evaluation of the condition of the carpet (=inspection made by 3rd party, which we didn't order).

Then I asked them to send me the urine inspection report & they sent me report from some other apartment.

Then I called them again & they said that they made a mistake & that they will send us our report asap.

~1 month passed & we received nothing.

We suspect that they wanted to replace the old 48 month carpet on our expense & never did the actual inspection. The thing is that we just moved into US, we are foreigners & they probably thought that it will be easy to fool us.

We want to sue them for that.

2) Also we are now physically in South Cal & have no plans (& extra money) to go to North Cal. How do we start the procedure without going there, is it possible? They have their branch in here too but I think that they'll turn out to be 2 different legal entities.

Please take into consideration that we're not able to hire a lawyer in North Cal to do all that due to our financial situation.

3) If it is possible to sue them here = to bring them into local court, will we be charged with all their legal expenses in case we lose our case?

Thanks in advance for your answers! I can provide any additional info by your request.


Asked on 5/20/14, 11:42 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys
Anthony Roach Law Office of Anthony A. Roach

As far as suing them where you are located, that may pose a problem. In law, this rule of procedure is known as venue. The venue rules depend on whether the action is local, or transitory. Your case appears to be transitory, so the following rule governs: "Except as otherwise provided by law and subject to the power of the court to transfer actions or proceedings as provided in this title, the superior court in the county where the defendants or some of them reside at the commencement of the action is the proper court for the trial of the action." (Code Civ. Proc., sect. 395, subd. (a).)

I'm not sure of the business nature of the prospective defendant, but they may want to transfer the case up north if they can show residence there.

To answer your second question, you can be charged with their legal expenses (costs) if you lose the lawsuit.

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Answered on 5/28/14, 1:58 pm


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