stealthninja
New Member
I am a student renting an apartment in a complex which has a separate building with an office and activity center which is available to all tenants using their supplied keycard. My roommates and I were playing basketball in the gym at about 12 at night and I kicked one of the basketballs and it accidently hit a sprinkler near the ceiling and water started shooting out. Soon after, the fire alarm started going off and we along with a few others that were in the building went outside. We were lucky enough that someone knew the phone number of one of the maintenance men of the place and called them. My roommates and I stayed around while the fire department came and the manager as well. We tried to help as much as we could. The fire fighters pushed the water out of the gym through the exit doors, but we were told to go home as there was not much we could do.
We were told to come in the next day and talk about the situation. Unfortunately as we are all college students our schedules did not work out well so my other 3 roommates went without me because I was in Lab. When they told me what was talked about they said that management told them that they would have to refinish the floor in the gym and that insurance would cover some of it but the rest would be up to us.
Now we receive a bill that charges for the replacement of the sprinkler head ($625) plus man power (2 maintenance men x 2 hours = $200) (which I'm told is because the maintenance men had to come in the middle of the night.)
Obviously my roommates don't want to pay because it's not their fault and I agree with them but I'm wondering if I should take this to small claims court or just try to reason with them. I feel that since it is a gym that there should be safety precautions so that things like this would not happen (such as cages on the sprinklers).
We were told to come in the next day and talk about the situation. Unfortunately as we are all college students our schedules did not work out well so my other 3 roommates went without me because I was in Lab. When they told me what was talked about they said that management told them that they would have to refinish the floor in the gym and that insurance would cover some of it but the rest would be up to us.
Now we receive a bill that charges for the replacement of the sprinkler head ($625) plus man power (2 maintenance men x 2 hours = $200) (which I'm told is because the maintenance men had to come in the middle of the night.)
Obviously my roommates don't want to pay because it's not their fault and I agree with them but I'm wondering if I should take this to small claims court or just try to reason with them. I feel that since it is a gym that there should be safety precautions so that things like this would not happen (such as cages on the sprinklers).
