Several students at the University of Kentucky are filing a lawsuit against a Lexington landlord who failed to return a $1,500 security deposit.

The landlord, Mike Haley, is withholding at least part of the security deposit because of broken blinds.  The renters, including UK Senior Keegan Bakus, argue that Haley failed to do a walk through at the end of the lease as required by Kentucky law. 

This is not the first problem the students have had in the two years they’ve lived in the house.  Two days before Bakus and his roommates moved into the house to plan future furniture arrangements, the students found a hole punched in the wall, a chunk of a door missing, and a gay slur painted on one of the walls. The damage forced them to move in late. 

Bakus’s father, Ron Bakus, an attorney practicing out of Louisville, will represent the students in the lawsuit. Bakus is concerned that such instances are under-reported problems in college towns.

Haley didn’t respond to phone calls and a certified letter from Bakus’s father demanding a refund. Bakus believes many Lexington students are being taken advantage of because they don’t know their renting rights or can’t afford to take legal action. 

“A lot of landlords know it’s expensive to hire a lawyer and students can’t afford it,” Keegan Bakus said. “So these guys can take your security deposit and you can’t do anything about it. I feel like it happens to a lot of people.”

“I think there are a lot of good landlords out there, but human nature would tell you that anybody who is aware that students can’t afford a lawyer … it makes sense [they] would keep the deposit,” Ron Bakus said.

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