that’s right, it’s not an ‘argument’ it’s a ‘breech of contract’ that puts you on the wrong side of the law

a landlord has every right to be pissed off at that and take every action that the law entitles him to

~

in my case, I NEVER kept any portion of anyone’s deposit unless it appeared to me that they had intentionally damaged my property

I had one case where I kept an entire deposit and another case where I took tenants to small claims court for damages that weren’t covered by their deposit – in both of these cases, the tenants had trashed my property and played games with me