A tenant recently took to Reddit to ask “AITA” after their landlord’s son snuck into the laundry room and had to be rushed to the hospital after climbing into the dryer while it was still running — and the landlords blamed the tenant and demanded they pay the medical fees.
OP says:
So I am living in a basement suite that has a laundry room next to it. The room is shared by [me] and the family I am renting from as part of the rental agreement
One day a week, the family will unlock the door in the laundry room that leads to my suite, and thus I have access to the room for the day. I put my clothes in the machine and shut the door to the suite so that I don’t hear all that ruckus. There are stairs in the laundry room that lead up to the rest of the house, so I assume that is how they access the laundry room.
They continued:
I had my clothes drying in the laundry room. All of a sudden I hear yelling from the wife and the next thing I know, the ambulance has arrived. I soon learn that: Apparently their 4-year-old opened up the dryer and climbed in.
With a normal dryer, this wouldn’t matter so much, but OP said the landlord’s “dryer was faulty.. it doesn’t shut off when you open the door. Yea…. So the kid was tumbling in there while the door was open and all because the machine didn’t shut itself off when the door was opened.”
The child was luckily not badly injured and the tenant thought that was the end of it, only to find that their landlords want them to reimburse them the costs of the ambulance ride and medical bill because they don’t have insurance.
The bills totaled at $8477.34, and the landlords claimed the tenant was responsible for them “because it was my laundry that the kid climbed into.”
OP took to a landlord-oriented forum to ask their opinions, but given the vacuum chamber of responses, they said the tenant should pay up the money to their landlords to be “morally fair” to them because they hadn’t raised rent on the tenant when the lease was up.
The tenant then edited their post to add clarifications to their post, including everything from responding to people surprised they only did laundry once a week to saying they would be consulting with a lawyer about next steps, but that it was likely the landlords would drop it.
Commenters declared the OP NTA, with many saying that it was the landlords’ responsibility to watch their child and that the tenant should lawyer up fast.
Finally the Op Edits:
EDIT:
Thanks for all the advice. Will discuss will a lawyer but don’t think they will try to pursue this outside of guilt tripping me as I think they know that they don’t really have a case.
To clear up a few things
- Yes I do laundry once a week. I am a single person and a few loads for one day of the week is enough for me. To be fair to the landpeople, they have expressed letting them know if I need an extra day or whatever to do laundry. They seemed chill about that part. Idk, I’ve never taken them up on that offer.
- I don’t know how the kid got in. He’s not that tiny like a newborn and the door doesnt take much effort to open. Idk, nor is it my responsiblity to know.
- yes, that really was the majority of the response on the landlord forum. I didn’t go into details, cause I didn’t need to; I only stated what the verdict came out to be: that I should pony up to be “fair”. Yes there were comments/discussion on the stupidity of the situation, there was some sympathy towards me. But the majority verdict in the echo chamber was(as to whether I should pay): Be grateful they didn’t raise rent and pay up or risk being a leech/or to just be nice because “dealing with tenants isn’t easy”. Mind you, I’ve never caused trouble for them to begin with. Aside from having the audacity of drying my clothes in the 21st century in a machine where their kid can climb into, I guess.
- And no… I didn’t close the dryer on the kid wth? Im assuming he tumbled/went in as it was still running after he opened the door, and he had trouble leaving the machine as it was literally rolling him around inside.
- I didn’t question the medical bill as I am a graduate student on a long term exchange program from… Canada. I’ve never paid a medical bill in my life and just accepted the fact it would be expensive. .