The Delmore Street case the judge remembered was the reason my parents lost before they understood they were losing. In it I had established, in that same courtroom, the standard for a warranty of habitability defense in that county, the precise legal principle that a tenant cannot be evicted for withholding rent on a unit the landlord has refused to make livable. My parents\u2019 expensive attorney knew the case. He had, in fact, cited it himself in an unrelated matter the previous year. He realized, watching the judge\u2019s face, that he was about to argue against the woman whose name was on the ruling he would have to distinguish, and he could not distinguish it, because Rosalind\u2019s leaking ceiling, mold-stained wall, and window that would not close in a Kansas winter were exactly the conditions the ruling covered.<\/p>\n
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I entered Rosalind\u2019s photographs, her call logs, her emails, her four written maintenance requests, and the maintenance company\u2019s own records showing the repairs had been scheduled and then cancelled twice by my father to save money. Then I entered the medical note from her daughter\u2019s pediatrician documenting the worsening cough. The eviction was dismissed within the hour. The judge ordered the repairs completed within fourteen days under inspection, and she abated Rosalind\u2019s rent for the four months the unit had been uninhabitable, which meant my parents owed her, not the reverse.<\/p>\n
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