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Guest
I live in a college town and rent an apartment that is managed by a company that is notorious for renting overpriced slums to students. The plumbing in my building has been difficult since I moved in, and I would often come home to find that sewage had made its way back up through the toilet long after the last time it had been flushed. I returned home after being gone for several days to find that this had occured, so I flushed the toilet and it began to overflow. The water went down through the vents into the apartment of the tenant underneath me. The next morning he was banging on my door, saying that the water had damaged a leather couch that he paid $1200 for. He went to the rental company and they showed him the lease he had signed which absolved them of responsibility for damaged property, then suggested that he go after me for the money. He says since the couch is a few years old he wants $500 for it (this was the estimate for what it would have cost to get it cleaned as well). He is threatening to take me to small claims court if I do not agree to pay him. I feel that I should have no responsibility for his property, even if the water did come from my apartment, because the plumbing in the entire building seems to be faulty. He even admitted to me that two days later, his toilet was stopping up, and that a few months before sewage was coming up through his shower drain. The rental company and I have been going back and forth as well over who should pay for some tile damage that occured. At first they were trying to hold me fully responsible, now they are trying to charge me for half the cost of repairs. They say the plumber cited too much paper in the pipes as the reason for the overflow, but as I said before, the pipes never seemed to be sufficient at carrying everything down. I have a friend who owned a building that they managed briefly, and he says that he had to re-repair everything that they ever fixed and that they left his building in very poor condition. Can any of this information help prove that it was not my fault? Technically, who is at fault in a situation such as this? Would I be better off settling out of court with my neighbor, (who has been so aggressive and unpleasent that I have not spent a single night at my apartment since this incident occured almost a month ago to avoid dealing with him)? If he does take me to small claims court, what should I do?