I feel Landlord illegally charged rent for unreturned keys after we moved out

[jendan01]

Is it legal for my former landlord to charge rent after we moved out all because we didn't return the keys? We lost the keys in our move. First of all, we served our 30 day notice which expired on 11/4/07. We were not able to move into our new place until 11/10/07 so we notifed our leasing company and paid rent through 11/10/07. We left on 11/9/07 instead of the 10th. Our leasing office claims they thought we were living in the unit until 11/27/07 but they didn't follow their normal business praqctice which is to serve a 3 day notice and start eviction proceedings. They close their books on the 25th of the month. That is the very last possible date that they would accept late rent if if was agreeable between them and the tenant. If rent wasn't received, they sent the file to the attorney. They didn't do that in our case. Instead, they charged us 17 days of rent when we were not living there. We shut off our utilities, furnished them our rental truck recepts, gas receipts that showed we were not in the area. By the way, we moved 6 hours away. We also gave them our new lease and our money order receipts for moving in the new place. Do you really think they would pay the utilities for us to secretely live there? I don't think so. My question, finally, is do we have any recourse to get the 17 days of rent that we were forced to pay after it was sent to the collection agency? We tried disputing it and it got us nowhere. I didn't want that to blemish my credit so can I sue for that money back in small claims? Any help would be greatly appreciated. I feel that they retaliated against us because we complained to the health department about the mouse problem that we had and they had to deal with the health department.

Jendan01