Landlord doesn't want to pay back repair...

Hi,
I am writing from Illionois.
My problem is follow:
My girlfriend rents apartment , and one Sunday night , when she came back home , she couldn't unlock her apratment door.She had problems with the same lock earlier and she already informed the landlord about that , but they refused to see. But that night she just couldn' t unlock the door at all. December, 10:00pm. Outside it was about 10F. She tried to call the person on duty , but didn't get any response. Waited like that to get any possible help (hoping that the person on duty would call back) about hour and a half matybe two. Besides the point she wanted to get in her apartment , she had some very important classes she needed to study for, and it was almost midnight.She decided to call emergency service to unlock the door. In meanwhile the person on duty call and said that they couldn' t do anything that night , but that she shouldn''t has called the service.???
The service guy came and had to uninstall the old lock couse he as a technician said, that the old lock was worn out and demaged, and that is the problem.
He instulled the new lock and charged my girlfriend $215.
Now , the landlord doesn't want to pay her back that amount , saying that she can't call outside service, but only the person in charge. For how long she was obligated to wait on that cold weather , knowing that half of the stuff she needed to finsih that night , couldn't be accomplished just couse of inadequancy of the landlord's perssonal?
Just for information , we had problems communicating with that 'person in charge' , even before.My girlfriend lived with no any drawer in her kitchen for the first 3 weeks.Just promisses that 'tomorrow will be instulled'.
Please give me advice what are her legal rights in this case
Thank You in advance

Based on what you say here, you could file suit against him (or at least threaten to do so) in small claims court or in regular court; filing in small claims court is easier and requires no attorney...

Thanks for the replay ,
but can I dare to ask you how I can do that?
What s the basic procedure of filing a small case?
Who should I contact?
Thanks a lot one more time!

[Law200]

See http://www.worldlawdirect.com/articl...ims_court.html