Break my lease: New Medical Condition Worsened/Created by Rental Situation

[Lboogies420]

Prior to my move in Feb 2009 I don't think I had more than 3 headaches in my entire life and I just turned 30 a week ago. Since moving, lucky me, I have been diagnosed with severe migraines and have just started to decipher my "triggers." Like most people who suffer from them, the computer is a big culprit but unfortunately for me I am glued to mine at work & it provides me with my sole source of income therefore not leaving me with an option of excluding that trigger from my daily life should I plan on being any part of ambulatory society. Caffeine & stress are also triggers for me: so no, I do not drink or eat anything containing caffeine, correct this includes chocolate & I take medication as well as visit with a therapist & practice yoga and meditative breathing to help de-stress myself. Where am I going as far as my rental? Well, allergies...POLLEN to be exact is my arch nemesis of triggers and my cottage is a cornucopia of honey bee heaven. From six rose bushes which literally give me hives, to the creepy crawly purple vines a top my roof, to the plethora of flowering wild life encapsulating the property not only can I not go outside I cannot rest inside. My migraines are not becoming under control and I have lost time and work & been hospitalized already due to the severity of my new condition. Given these circumstances...do I have legal justification to break my lease without penalty given the support of a physician, etc?

Allergies are one cause of your migraines. I don't know if the ADA would cover allergies since they usually do not disable a person. Have you looked into taking allergy medications to stop the resulting migraines? Unfortunately, you cannot blame all of this on the pollen around your unit. You have said that "the computer is a big culprit but unfortunately for me I am glued to mine at work". Doubtless that is causing some of your headaches. Since you have not mitigated this cause, it would be hard to blame all these headaches on the grounds of the rental alone, and could not use this as a reason to terminate.

Unless covered by the ADA, you would be unable to break your lease without consequences. Have you spoken to the LL or management yet about this? That would be your first place to start. Maybe they will be sympathetic and allow you to end the lease with few fees if you find a new tenant. Go and talk to them immediately.

Hi, my name is David Worrell and I work with companies that are trying end their lease obligations. One of the biggest ways and reasons I have landlords terminate tenant leases is from the presence of "black mold" in the ceiling and walls.

This is a very serious legal issue and your symptoms seem to follow the same pattern.

If I were you - go to Lowe's or Home Depot and purchase a mold test kit - the one's with the pitri dishes included (about $20). Follow the instructions and see if mold appears. If it does, you can send off for a professional test ($35).

If the mold is one of several types - you can terminate your lease on that basis.

PS: I am a lawyer nor giving legal advice. But landlords wet their pants if mold is truly present due to water invasion from their lack of maintenance. It could possibly close down the entire building. Letting you out is a fast solution. dworrell@att.net

Sorry, but that advice won't hold up in court if challenged by an attorney. Only one type of mold, black mold, is harmful to humans and would allow anyone out of their lease automatically. That mold makes up less than 1% of all molds seen. A cheap test kit from any big box store can easily be disputed in court. How could a LL dispute this? The person doing the test is not qualified and may not have done it correctly. The test could have been altered, it wasn't done by a disinterested 3rd party. Unless the lab is an accredited lab, their $35 results can be ruled useless. This test doesn't show how much mold is present. (If there is very little, no judge would allow a termination for it.) The test doesn't test for mold in the air (ppm) to see the air quality. It only tests for surface mold. The test doesn't compare outside mold to the inside mold. (Mold is present in air everywhere. How much more mold is in the air inside is important to prove it isn't just normal airborn mold.) And to make it worse, you are merely trolling for business on a post that doesn't even mention mold! Trying to intimidate LLs to allow terminations from this without the above proof is a poor business practice.

Any mold claim should cover:
1. What type of mold is present? Is it a harmful strain or a benign one?
2. How much mold is present? A small area that can be remediated easily, or an expansive section of the unit?
3. How much mold is in the indoor air vs. the ambient mold in normal outdoor air to prove increased exposure (rather than normal exposure).