landlord failed to fix

ny-i live in an apartment complex..last week our vanity mirror in the bathroom started to seperate from the wood backing that it was on. it was very lose and wobbly so my husband called the office and told them about it. earlier today the mirror fell off it's hinge and fell to the floor, glass shattered and cut my husband in the leg the door even left a dent in the floor. my question is what can we do about this, can we sue them?

Sorry, but you have no grounds to sue them. First, you did not put the repair request in writing, you only phoned, so you have no record of even reporting the problem to them or proving that they knew how severe the problem was. Second, the LL has a set time to make repairs after they are reported to him. Emergency repairs (fire, flood, electrical or heating problems) must be completed within 24-72 hours (depending on state law). Other problems have a much longer time to repair. This problem was not an emergency so the LL can take more than a week to do this repair, in some states he has up to 30 days to do this repair. That time had not elapsed before it broke. Lastly, you did nothing to stop this from happening yourself. You could have taped the mirror to the backing temporarily, put a spring clip on to hold it from further damage, poured some glue in the gap, etc. You did nothing to stop any possible injury to yourself and failed to take reasonable care to prevent it.

About all you can do now is to report that the mirror broke before they could fix it and report the damages to the unit so you don't get charged for them at move out. Do this in writing.