Dispute with Landlord over Deposit - Matter in Small Claims Court

[Roger69]

Hi All,

Apologies for the longish mail..my queries are really at the end of the whole story.

 

I am currently having a dispute with my Landlady for Not returning my deposit of £895 after i had vacated the property.

 

Basically we rented a furnished property for 2 years from 2006 until 2008.

At the time of vacation, I had called the landlady for inspection.During Inspection she did not raise any specific issues and after that i started calling her for my deposit.She did not take any calls but after a couple of weeks sent me a letter listing down issues which i had not noticed when we vacated. We exchanged a lot of letters about the issues. She also asked me to come and verify (But that was not possible as we had moved to a completely different location i.e would require a days travel to visit & verify the issues). I asked her to send me evidence but she never provided me any (Also there was never any INVENTORY LIST given). I was not aware of the small claims court process and hence wasnt sure what legal route to take as the fees the Solicitor's were charging was exorbitant.

 

Finally i knew about the small claims court from a friend and decided to send her a claims notice through the Small Claims court after almost 6-8 months.

 

i)The Small Claims court sent her the claim notice for my Deposit of £895 + interest charges.

ii)I recieved a Defense Copy back from her saying she does not owe me anything and attached all our earlier communications where she had listed the issues. (She never made any counter claim as part of this defense).

iii)I then replied back to the court saying there is no evidence she has provided to back up her issues.

iv)After that she sent an Application to the court requesting if she can make a counter claim.A copy of that application was sent to me with the court setting a date to grant her permission to make a counter claim. Later on i recieved another order from the court saying that she can make a counter claim if she wishes to and we dont need a hearing for that.

 

My Queries-

1. The court allowing her permission to make a counter claim (after she had initially chosen not to).

Does this mean that the Court feels that my claim is not valid hence she can make make a counter claim. (This because they were first going to have a hearing to decide this permission but later on decided a hearing is not needed and she can make a counter claim if she wishes).

Once she makes a counter claim I will have to respond to it by a certain date.

 

2. What are my chances in this i.e In the absence of an Inventory List and also not pointing any issues during inspection? I had infact asked her repeatedly for an Inventory List but she did not provide when i had moved in?

 

Please provide any info as this is the first time i am going through this rut...

[Lia7769]

I'm in the middle of a huge dispute with my landlord too so know how stressful it is!...

The court allowing her counterclaim doesn't reflect badly on your case, our LL's counterclaim made our case go to fast track, even though his was all lies - it just shows the court a)have to take every case seriously and b)want to make as much money out of people as they can.

Our case is missing an inventory too, and apparently it really improves your chances of getting the money back.

Good luck!

[barracad]

1. The court allowing her permission to make a counter claim (after she had initially chosen not to).

Does this mean that the Court feels that my claim is not valid hence she can make make a counter claim.

 

Not at all. In fact it's probably beneficial to you in allowing this without a hearing as it would have inconvenienced you to go to a hearing just so that her counterclaim could be allowed (I can't see any reason why they would refuse to allow her a counterclaim). This doesn't reflect on your chance of success whatsoever.

 

2. What are my chances in this i.e In the absence of an Inventory List and also not pointing any issues during inspection? I had infact asked her repeatedly for an Inventory List but she did not provide when i had moved in?

 

I would say you have an excellent chance of winning your claim - if you didn't sign an inventory then there is no basis for dilapidations (in other words the landlord cannot prove anything was or wasn't there, or the state of cleanliness of the house, state of the garden, etc), so she has no basis on which to make deductions.

[Roger69]

Thanks guys..that definately removes some of my doubts!