Breaking lease for no repairs.

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? Pennsylvania

Sorry in advance for the length.

We moved into an apartment in May 2007. We had to put down a security deposit of $830 and a refundable pet deposit of 200. In the lease it states that "the landlord shall: make any necessary repair to the apartment and vital facilities within a reasonable time after notice by the tenant". It also states, "typical emergencies are overflowing toilets, loss of heat, fire, or flood". With that said, we had a hard rainstorm and it flooded our living room. It was not really bad, but it was wet especially near the sliding glass door. We called the emergency maintenance number and received no response. We were forced to clean up the mess by ourselves. (I have phone records that we did call) The next day with the office opened I went over and told the landlord what had happened. She wrote a report and it was never cleaned up by them, and the issue was never fixed. They tried to fix it approx. 3 weeks later, but what they fixed was not the problem. We had roaches in our apartment, which they said they sprayed, we never saw them doing that. Our heaters had potpurri in them from the previous tenants that were never removed even til the day we moved out (fire hazard?). Our back bedroom did not have a smoke detector, and was never given one. Our sink leaked at least a HUGE bucket a day, which we continually had to dump. This was never fixed. We would have suds come up in our sink. Mind you this is not from us, we found out that it was the laundry suds from the upstairs apartment coming up in our sink. Again, this was never fixed. Our one toilet was leaking, this was eventually fixed after it exploded and water flooded out bathroom (1 inch+ of water on our floor). We called the emergency maintenance number. They told us to turn off the water and they would come by "tomorrow" to fix it. Tomorrow came, nothing, the next day came, nothing, the next day, nothing, finally I went over the office and told them about this. They wrote a report. They did not come fix it until a week later. When they did finally fix it, the toilet in the apartment above us exploded too. With this sending all this water behind our walls and all over the apartment. We had puddles everywhere. The water went behind our walls and was coming out of our electrical outlets. We ran to tell them, they cleaned up the puddles everywhere, but did nothing about the water behind our walls and coming out of our electrical outlets. We then had to live without electricity in that part of the apartment for a while because I was not about to leave the electricity on while water was coming out of the outlets.

Now that you know the story, we terminated the lease early in August 2007. We may have terminated it, but I do not believe we broke it. I believe the landlord broke it. In the lease it says that if you terminate the lease early, you have to pay 2 months rent fee. When we gave notice that we were terminating the lease, we were told that we would get our security deposit back and would not have to pay the 2 months rent fee if we found someone that would rent it right away. I was in contact with a woman who told me she already had an appointment with the landlord for our apartment. She eventually did rent the apartment and when I spoke to the landlord to confirm everything she stated that we did not have to pay the 2 months rent fee but we would not get our security deposit because she told us that "i meant one of your friends not someone off the street". (Why would I rent that horrible place to one of my friends?) Well more than 30 days after we terminated the lease we got a letter stating we owed the 2 months rent fee and we got our security deposit back as a "credit". We tried to pay the amount because we were just tired of them and wanted to just be done with them. However, they never signed for their check and it was sent back to us.

I was waiting for them to take legal action against me because I never paid them the amount due, but they never did, so now I am going to sue them for my security deposit and my refundable pet fee which I never got back and for a month of rent because of everything that has happened it is hard to live with no electricity (which is no heat also). Hard to do dishes with dirty wash suds in your sink. etc.

Also as a side note, when the landlord did the final inspection, there was no damage, so there is no money due for damages.

What I am wondering is, I think I have a great case, but is it legally a great case that I would get my security deposit and refundable pet fee back?

I would think you could prevail--but only if you can show it was impossible to live there under those conditions.

Keep detailed records and photos if you have them.