HELP: Do I have any legal recourse on my lease if I'm finding poisonous animals inside??

[Descartes]

So, I may not have spitting cobras or black mambas in my townhome, but I'm finding brown recluse spiders quite regularly. Yesterday, I come home from dinner, and stop in the hall to greet my cats. I notice them freaking out and getting into attack mode, and to my surprise, a brown recluse was no more than 2 inches from my foot, and he was moving towards me.

They just sprayed last week. They sprayed a few weeks before that as well, and still I'm finding them. Is this not a potentially lethal situation for my animals, and a health detriment to me? Would this not constitute a means to legally break a lease w/o a financial loss on my end?

Need opinions here. Also, can I sue for punituve damages for all the damn nightmares I've been having about these spiders? I suffer terribly from arachniphobia, especially ones that can destroy tissue.

 

[iamwiz82]

brown recluse are fscking evil. I saw picture of a guy whose back in now a huge ulser cuz the venom triggered off some sort of anti-growth in his tissue.

 

[slipperyslope]

First I would contact your landlord. If they do not fix the problem then I think you will be able to break the lease but you will need to be able to prove you gave them the opportunity to fix the problem on multiple occassions.

Jim

 

[Descartes]

I just talked to them again. They'll be spraying again next Thursday, and they'll put out some "glue traps" as well.

Does anyone know if the brown recluse is lethal to smaller animals? Funny thing was, my cats normally attack and consume every insect they can find, but they were steering clear of the brown recluse. If they pose a serious danger to my cats, I'll leave asap.

 

[MichaelD]

You seem more worried about the cats than about yourself. Interesting. Are the cats in your will as well? I'd call their veteranarian (they prolly get checkups more often than you do!) and ask. Some toxins that kill humans do not affect animals. I would think that the spiders' venom IS detrimental to cats b/c cats are warm-blooded mammals like humans. Good luck. I would not wait until next week. Tell the landlord you want someone there tomorrow. You will take off from work and wait for them to get there. You could be dead by next week.

 

[miniMUNCH]

A brown recluse bite would probably kill a cat. People get pretty sick from them.

I would be going ballistic right now if I were you.

 

[StormRider]

I would be so pissed if I moved into a place with brown recluse spiders. How can you even sleep at night? I would be so paranoid about spiders crawling on me when I'm sleeping. I hope everything works out well for you.

You seem more worried about the cats than about yourself.

I would be worried for my pets too (if I had any).

 

[NuclearNed]

Contact your landlord IN WRITING and keep a copy. Make sure it is dated. If possible, get it notarized. I'm not kidding.

We lived in an apartment in Atlanta where we had a scorpion problem. Yes, it was news to me that scorpions run wild in Georgia. My landlord sprayed every now and then, but it took the threat of legal action before they really paid attention to me. And part of the reason that they began to take me seriously was that I had documented everything.

 

[HomeBrewerDude]

dude, your legal recourse is to move without having to worry about breaking your lease. BTW, its irrelevant that the spiders are poisenous. You can break your lease based simply on the fact that the apartment is infested with pests. Don't expect to be able to get any damages out of the landlord... doesn't sound liek the are being negligant... Have you called the health department? of the animal control agency for the city you lived in? They might be interested to know that there is a outbreak of poisenous spiders.

 

[Cerebus451]

There are a couple of things to note here.

First, are these townhomes relatively new? If so, then finding spiders in and around them is pretty normal. When the townhomes were built, they likely tore down some trees and leveled an overgrown area that was serving as living quarters for them. They come into the townhomes simply because they are looking for a food supply. If you destroy any webs and egg sacks you see, they will eventually leave and move on to someplace else to live. Spiders are not social creatures (hence the second word in brown recluse) and will move away from activity in order to find a quite place to set up a web.

If the townhomes are not new, then there is a definite problem. Something else is drawing the spiders in, which is not natural. It is strange for a spider to leave its natural habitat and move into the hustle and bustle of human life.

Another consideration to take into account is that it is very difficult to spray for spiders. You can spray down a web, but unless you get the spider itself, the spider will likely not be affected.

They do sell sonic devices now that are supposed to repel spiders and be safe for pets. You can try a couple of those in your living spaces, especially around doors that lead to the outside. That might help to keep the spiders out, and if it doesn't affect the cats then you should be okay. You can also go into places like garage corners and crawl spaces and knock down any webs you see. You don't have to get the spider - if you knock down the web chances are the spider will look elsewhere to build a new one. Eventually if you knock down enough of them the spiders will move out.

It's tough to do as an arachniphobe. When I moved into a newly built house they spiders were everywhere, including an absolutely huge wolf spider in the space above the garage (saw him in person a couple of times - about 6-7 inches across). They didn't bother me too much, but shortly after I moved in a friend moved in with me, and he was a serious arachniphobe, so I had to kill a lot of the spiders I saw instead of just taking them out to the woods to find a new home. Never saw anything too deadly, though we found what looked like a young black widow making a nest under one of the downspout splashblocks. Needless to say, that one didn't live - no sense tempting fate with those.

As for the legal aspects, I am not sure. Unless others in the block of townhomes have lost pets to the spiders, or have been attacked themselves, it might be difficult to prove a case. One thing to do in addition to documenting with letters is trying to capture one of the spiders just to show they do indeed exist. If you can't, then ask a friend that may not be so afraid of them to try and catch one for you. That way you have definitive proof that something much more menacing than a common house spider is present.

 

[bunker]

<< Contact your landlord IN WRITING and keep a copy. Make sure it is dated. If possible, get it notarized. I'm not kidding.

We lived in an apartment in Atlanta where we had a scorpion problem. Yes, it was news to me that scorpions run wild in Georgia. My landlord sprayed every now and then, but it took the threat of legal action before they really paid attention to me. And part of the reason that they began to take me seriously was that I had documented everything. >>


Wow, we had the same problem in an Atlanta apartment! I didn't know there were scorpions here either.
Descartes, be careful about how often you want them to spray. We had problems with spiders and scorpions in our apartment too and they sprayed quite often. I spoke with the pest control guy one day and he told me he really shouldn't be spraying the stuff indoors more than once a month. So your cats may be in danger as it is from the chemicals. You should be able to break your lease, but as was said previously, make all of your correspondence in writing, sent by certified mail.

 

[Fiddy]

Try here Tenant Rights Be sure and check your shoes and clothes before you put them on. And your sheets before you go to bed. Their bites are horrible, rots the flesh. You do not want to get bit.