To be shocked at landlord’s allegations about me

[JustWowser]

I am currently suing my previous landlord for very good reason.

She is defending the claim. Part of my claim is for emotional distress and stress which is clearly evidenced.

Got her defence this morning and it is pretty ridiculous but at the end she has stated the great stress she has been under since I was given her address (letting refused at first until I informed them if the law), that she has chest pains, couldn’t work and had to go to her GP for stress.

She also stated that she has had nightmares that I would burn her house down while her children were in it.

This has shaken me tbh, that someone would say this about me. I’m a regular Mum, never made any threats or abuse to her. It is a shocking thing to say.

What do you think the court is going to think of this?

OP sorry you went through that experience, whether or not your landlord broke the law it sounds awful. Try to ignore those who are trying to pick holes, as pp have said they are probably landlords themselves getting triggered by reference to a renter daring to try and enforce their rights. You have had some free legal advice so presumably a trained professional considered you had at least an arguable claim and it’s your right to pursue that claim in the courts even if you ultimately lose (not suggesting you will but the point is, you have a right to your day in court as it were). That is what the court system is there for.

To answer your actual questions, you’re not unreasonable to be shocked as many people would feel upset at the suggestion someone was having nightmares about them as described.

Please don’t worry about it as part of her defence though. She is not even accusing you of causing stress by your behaviour, she is saying the stress is caused by you having her address i.e. there is no allegation being made against you (unless she has framed it as a counterclaim but for what? She can’t sue you for suing her). The court will decide the case based on the evidence of what happened at the time. The impact on her of the litigation is completely irrelevant.

The best thing you can do is to not rise to it and just come across as extremely calm and level headed in all your correspondence with the court and with her. Good luck.

It conveys she's having nightmares.

YABU for not giving the reasons you’re suing her in your OP. She sounds unhinged though. What a ridiculous thing to say. She’s been an appalling landlord and you are attempting to hold her to account. Implying you’ve made threats against her when you haven’t is a nasty tactic and a judge really should see through it. Good luck with your lawsuit, I sincerely hope you win.

Quite. You both sound a bit silly. A defence is there to put across their point of view. You can hardly be upset someone has said they’re stressed when you’re saying the same thing!!

No not just for cash. I don’t need it particularly.

I obviously want a legal judgement against her and to see her in court. Why should she get away with it with breaching a legal responsibility and causing so much stress which I have to lie down and take just because she’s a landlord exactly?

I’m a great multi tasker (have to be) and reasonably intelligent so it’s not that onerous.

Why shouldn’t I be angry? I teach my children it’s a healthy emotion if you deal with it in the right way.

I don’t run a business. I work from home for a business as is quite usual these days. Lucky I do as otherwise I’d have had to be at home while contractors were in and out for 6 months and go home to let them in when they turned up when they fancied! Why should I have to leave unknown men in my house who I didn’t know nor was I able to check them out.

We did have something go missing despite me being there which I haven’t said anything about as no clear proof.

You may expect the odd repair job being booked in over the course of a tenancy as a tenant but not 12 different contractors for varying periods of time over 6 months starting from within a few days after you move in! The whole point is the work was dragged out over failed temp repairs, waiting for her unqualified handyman to turn up etc, because she didn’t want to pay for the work to be done properly which she knew about before we moved in.

I'd be happy with that response, OP. It paints the Landlord in a very bad light (making over-the-top, "colourful" claims of the stress she's experiencing because she was asked to comply with the Tenancy Act and give her address...).

It reflects very poorly on her.

Renting is the pitts but don't waste time if it will be pointless, even so called water tight cases spring a leak a lot of the time

OP ignore the posters on here giving you shit. You moved into a house that needed extensive repairs without being told, and were forced to live on a building site for 6 months. Then evicted when you complained. I’d love to see some of these posters putting up with that. But they expect you to, don’t they!

This is exactly why the law is changing and reading some of the responses to you on here confirms why it’s necessary. You are not a “nightmare tenant”, your landlady is a bell end and I hope you win.

I can understand why you are upset, but everything that she is saying is totally irrelevant and won’t even be taken into account in a court of law. Just ignore it.

I strongly suggest to you that you strenuously avoid giving the judge the impression that you are on a personal crusade to hold landlords to account. You have hinted at the crusading aspect of your suit here and explicitly stated it earlier in the thread.

Bear in mind the possibility that your judge or adjudicator could very well be a landlord him or herself.

You need to let the stress / nightmare stuff wash over you and stick firmly to the landlord's failure to uphold her end of the contract and the concrete and material consequences to you of that.

List the failures. Provide concrete evidence.
List the consequences and provide concrete evidence - endangering health or recovery, preventing you from WFH, causing your children distress (include the autism diagnosis and any evidence that disruption had a major effect on them - a statement that they had nightmares isn't evidence). Include documentation on how you WFH and also supervise children who are not in school, or have it ready if questioned.

Keep to facts. If course she will give her feelings on this. Don't take it personally. Get a solicitor to represent you but you are unlikely get anything for stress. There always two sides to a story and it's the judge who will.listen to both and not get emotionally involved.

It sounds like you'll be fine.

The court will likely think "is it proportional to get stressed because your former tenant has your address, which they are legally entitled to?" and "is it not rather convenient that having got sued she's counter-claiming the same thing?" and "on what basis did she fear arson, or does it sound like she is not being honest, in which case what else is she lying about in her defence?"

What did you expect. Course she's going to defend the action.

All sounds a bit silly really. All the money it's going to cost you. Youdbe better using it as a deposit on a house then you won't have to put up with crap landlords again

Ha ha ha yep those’d the bit that drew my eye

I think you need to stick to the facts and keep emotions out of it.

@2ndbestslayer she has nothing in writing from you to say or for her to believe you would do that . Her only reason is to try make you look bad instead of herself. I think she sounds crazy and I’d think any judge would tell her she can’t dream and it be real or use it for a defence in court .

Crack on then OP.

Why shouldn’t I be angry? I teach my children it’s a healthy emotion if you deal with it in the right way.

For me it wouldn't be about landlord V tenant. Or someone 'getting away with it' ...

I'd rather spend my time on things I enjoy - rather than focusing on 'wanting a legal judgement against her'.

Tenants take their landlords to court and win umpteen times a day. You're not on some crusade here.

All that matters is the strength of the individual case.

That’s not correct.

So I do know someone who is a landlord whos tenant sued them for stress and they counter sued. It got settled out of court in the end, the tenant had alao not paid rent for 6 months. I think the landlord endes up paying a sum near to 10 grand. It went on for over a year.
We also rented a property a gear ago that had similar issues to yours actually, it had leaks, holes cut to service leaks, so had holes in the ceilings for months, holes under the kitchen cupboards leading to sewers where a rat got in, an ant infestation, busted double glazing, drafts that I had to fill wjth newspaper, workmen coming to fix issues every few weeks, bodging them and then returning
..and the rent was 3 grand a month.
in the end we ended the tenancy early, we didnt sue but to be honest we should have.

@JustWowser you can't be in any way held responsible for her dreams or unfounded anxieties. Sounds like she is clutching at straws. This is assuming you have evidence to support your claim and she has jack shit to support hers.

I luckily found a property nearby within a few days of getting the Section 21. Thought it would be gone as they are normally snapped up in days - South East (we had enough trouble missing out before we got the one we were in) but they hadn’t started viewings yet. Accepted despite 30+ applications as few properties in our area.I put in the court claim on the same day I received the S21 as I realised it wouldn’t effect an eviction as she’d already done it. I hadn’t prior as I was worried she’d immediately evict and although we’d put up with a lot, we didn’t want to be FORCED to move as we thought the work was coming to an end, silverfish were dwindling and at least we’d put up for it all for something! We also didn’t want to move after only 8 months packing up again, cost of moving, shortage of properties and youngest is doing GCSEs and DC had friends nearby so worried we’d have to move out of area. We live near DC’s school and I want to be close by due to medical condition.

When I told the letting agent we could move out within a few weeks as we needed a landlord reference, they relayed that the landlord had said she would be putting in the reference that I was taking legal action against her obviously to try to scupper us being accepted! I mean why would you do that if you wanted us out! Looks like SHE wanted to drag us through court and leave us homeless!

New landlord was happy to accept with just evidence rent had been paid on time so we went ahead.

Letting agent gave us back full deposit as house was left absolutely pristine (better than we found it) and I warned we had full video evidence. Quite unusual as they are known for making up claims to retain it.

I have also taken letting agent to Property Ombudsman and complaint is currently under review.

Property is now up for rent again at a higher price and it seems they’ve done the rest of the work they said they weren’t going to do but our new one is much better and well maintained with no leaks.

I still haven’t got over the habit of checking the bed each night for silverfish and checking clothes from wardrobes, immediately assuming black bits on floor are silverfish (DC still worries) but thankfully it doesn’t look like we brought them with us!

Bloody hell, all the slumlords and bootlickers are out in force on this thread.

I hope you win, OP. She sounds like a greedy pig, letting a house that she knew was not fit to live in and then charging full whack for you to have builders traipsing in and out for months on end with two disabled people who were impacted by the lack of peace. And then evicting you when you complained!

Some PPs are even upset that you have disabled people at home while you're WFH. Imagine being so bereft of empathy and having the boot so far down your throat that your sympathy lies with an anonymous business (which is - as far as we know - happy with your work) over and above a mum who is just trying to keep a roof over everyone's head and meet everyone's needs.

Usually people resort to such exaggeration when they don’t really have much of a case. The court will only look at the legal issues and evidence. You sound like you’ve got you case all laid out with supporting evidence evidence. She sounds like a raving banshee. Don’t get upset at her comment. She’s clutching at straws

Why?