Landlord Falsely Reports Tenant rental history

[dickg]

a friend of mine and his wife have lived in this apartment complex for over 10 years. They finally decided it was time for a change so they gave their landlord the proper 30 day notice to vacate. The tenants started putting in applications for new apartments and to their surprise have found the manager giving them a bad rental reference.
The manager is telling prospective tenants that they have caused damage, had NSF checks returned, and other unspecified problems. While this has been going on the manager is coaxing the couple to lease up for another year.
Its clear to me that this manager is preventing a vacancy by falsifying the tenants record.
I have searched the landlord tenant statutes but I cannot find one related to the Managers bad conduct. Is this perhaps outside of the landlord tenant statute realm and should properly be covered under some civil suit... maybe small claims?
Please help me out.

 

[army judge]

a friend of mine and his wife have lived in this apartment complex for over 10 years. They finally decided it was time for a change so they gave their landlord the proper 30 day notice to vacate. The tenants started putting in applications for new apartments and to their surprise have found the manager giving them a bad rental reference.
The manager is telling prospective tenants that they have caused damage, had NSF checks returned, and other unspecified problems. While this has been going on the manager is coaxing the couple to lease up for another year.
Its clear to me that this manager is preventing a vacancy by falsifying the tenants record.
I have searched the landlord tenant statutes but I cannot find one related to the Managers bad conduct. Is this perhaps outside of the landlord tenant statute realm and should properly be covered under some civil suit... maybe small claims?
Please help me out.

What do you think you can be proven?

Even if you could prove something, is it actionable?

Would those that are allegedly repeating these 'things" to you, swear to "them" before a court of law?

If these "things" are true, they'd be most closely related to the common law tort of defamation of character; depending on whether they were spoken (slander), or written (libel).

These are very hard torts to prove.