unswornlemon
New Member
- Jurisdiction
- Ohio
I have recently been putting my rent into escrow due to lack of repairs on some major issues in my apartment. I have had the city building inspector in to look at these issues and he presented the rental company with a list of things that needed to be taken care of. That was in the beginning of May. On June 19th of this year, two of the things were "patched" and I had my A/C replaced. On June 22nd of this year, I received a letter from an attorney, dated 6/18/18, that repairs had been taken care of in my apartment and that I would be receiving a notice of when to appear in court for the release of escrow. The letter was dated ONE day before ANY repair ever took place!! Not all of the repairs, per the city, have been taken care of to date and I have pictures showing that! I have gone to my rental companies Facebook page, to their review section and had left a 1 star review. I was not the only one that did this. There were a few other residents that did this as well. My comment was met with hatred and threats from a fake FB account and since then, all negative comments that were left by me were removed. Yesterday, I receive another letter from their attorney asking for dismissal of the case seeing that all repairs had been taken care of. This is not true! There are several other repairs that need to take place! Not only did the letter ask for dismissal of the case, but I was also "advised" that if I were to continue leaving false statements on the internet regarding the rental company, I was asking for more legal action because these statements are not protected speech! I was also told in this letter that if I agreed to dismiss the case and release the escrow to the rental company, that they would let me out of my lease immediately! I am not sure about this but I believe that I am politely being evicted? My lease isn't up until 4/2019 and I have until then to move and trust me, I don't want to be here any longer than they want me here, but I am trying to save up the $$ to move and that isn't going to happen overnight! Do I need to get a lawyer involved in this? Do I need to just sign the dismissal and go about my business? What about my comments not being protected speech? I was under the impression that if it was a public forum, you could pretty much say anything as long as it wasn't threatening? Suggestions?