TULSA, Okla — Joane Masengi feels lucky she was not home when bullets from a shooting on the other side of her building ripped into her apartment near 81st and Sheridan.
"As soon as I got that call from my apartment complex and a police officer I just thought, yeah, I can't stay here anymore," Masengi said.
Now, she's packing up to move out. She called 2 News after her apartment manager told her what to expect if she broke her lease.
"One month's rent," Masengi said, "And an extra two months’ worth of rent because of insufficient notice."
Masengi did not think that was right, and with a limited income, she could not afford to pay it, so she contacted the Problem Solvers.
We contacted Marc Roark, a University of Tulsa Law Professor whose area of expertise is landlord-tenant law. We used our laptop to show her what he had to say about her situation.
"Every lease in Oklahoma includes the covenant of quiet enjoyment and the covenant of quiet enjoyment means that the landlord has to guarantee the peaceable possession of property by the tenant," Roark said. "I would consider this to be an instance of violence where a gunshot has actually intruded and trespassed through the tenant's possession, then that scale of of action is something that renders that covenant having to have been breached by the landlord."
Even though it was not the landlord that fired the shots.
He said Masengi is well within her legal rights to give notice in writing that she is leaving as a result of that breach and she doesn't owe that extra money.
About that he said, "We see this all the time with landlords, particularly corporate landlords, because in the landlord-tenant relationship the landlord often times is in the power position of requiring or being able to stipulate that the tenant take some action in order to, in order for them to be released from the lease. That's just not what the law says in certain instances."
He added, it's important that Masengi to give her landlord notice in writing that she is moving out because the quiet enjoyment covenant was breached by the shooting and if the landlord brings any action against her she can use that to defend against it.
Contact the Problem Solvers:
- 918-748-1502
- problemsolvers@kjrh.com
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