There’s a million reasons why this could be a major concern. Have you ever been to a retail location that has the following sign on their doors: “The door to remained unlocked during business hours” The reason is simple, its a major health and safety risk to lock people in buildings.

You are right that management should change out the lock to ensure that it doesn’t happen again. It was irresponsible for them to NOT have done it already. Since you weren’t actually harmed, I really doubt there is much you can do legally. So filing a lawsuit against your landlord probably won’t do you a lot of good. (plus you would need real proof that they were aware of the problem and neglectfully didn’t fix it– I doubt, especially in this economy, that you will be able to get the maintenance worker to make a signed statement… very unlikely. Verbal speech won’t do much good)

To show your landlord or apartment manager that you take this kind of thing serious and that you won’t stand for such irresponsible actions, you could always file an official landlord complaint. I’m sure that will get them to immediately fix the problem– it would if a tenant filed a complaint against one of my rentals. (I know, I had one or two) Here’s the link: http://www.rentalprotectionagency.com/complaint_center.php

You could also just beg them to fix it and repair it. Its up to you, but if you think legal action is and should be considered, do the complaint thing.

Mary Gustin
Property Manager