Legal Question in Landlord & Tenant Law in Minnesota

My best friend and I co-signed a lease with three other girls for a 5 br upper duplex. Since then, these girls refused to clean anything... including their cats' urine, feces, and vomit all over the entire place.

We discovered a few days after moving in that there were rotting potatoes under the kitchen sink--to the point of corroding the paint on the shelf and growing MAGGOTS. They also left plates of molding, half-eaten food everywhere, piled bags upon bags of garbage near the door. When my friend and I would leave for a long weekend, we'd come back to a sink full of stagnating water, stinking trash, and how could I forget the massive fruit fly infestation due to bags of fruit that had been hidden and were rotting for more than a month?! In addition to that, there was molding food in the refrigerator. My friend and I were the only ones who did any semblance of cleaning.

Finally, I developed severe health problems that had me in and out of the hospital. My doctors finally determined that this house was the cause of my problems and I was ordered by my doctor to move out immediately.

I told the other girls in no uncertain terms, and more than once, that if they did not start to clean, my friend and I would be moving out and we would not be paying anymore rent. The other girls agreed and did not offer any argument. I regret not having gotten that agreement in writing, and I recognize that was an error on my part.

In the beginning of December after no improvement (and at the time I was ordered to leave by my doctor), we told the girls we would be moving out. We decided to be nice and pay for all of December and even all of January's rent to give them time to find new tenants to sublease the space. We told them clearly that we would not pay for rent after January. The girls agreed once again. We notified the landlord of our decision to leave and all the reasons why, and he said more-or-less, "I won't get involved. Hope you can work it out!"

Suddenly it seems that they might want to take us to court for the rent. We've taken many photographs of the unsafe condition of the duplex--the cat vomit crushed in the carpet, the fire hazards, and the other elements that have made the environment UNSAFE, UNLIVABLE, and UNSANITARY, and I've even taken mold samples and am waiting for the lab to send back results.

What sort of rights, arguments, or defense do my friend and I if they decide to bring us to court for the remainder of the rent? The lease lasts until May. Our landlord had been in and out of the duplex the entire time, which means he has seen with his own eyes the state the girls left his property in. He chose not to intercede when my friend and I informed him of the state of his property.

I would argue that the girls broke the terms of the lease when they created an unsafe and unlivable environment in several ways, and when I told them of it, they didn't fix it. I would also argue that the landlord was aware of the situation and chose not to take action, which means he allowed it to continue to be an unsafe and unlivable situation.

I am unsure what to do, but I absolutely cannot pay for a space that made me so ill I had to quit my jobs and nearly had to drop out of school and was ordered by my doctor to leave.

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