Suing Our Former Landlord And Now Being Countersued. Texas

We’re taking our former landlord to small claims for negligence, breach of contract; and violation of numerous property codes. We have many photos and videos backing our claims and showing that the defendant made no attempt to make the place safe for us during our time there. We are representing ourselves, he has hired a lawyer.

In his counterclaim, the defendant is claiming that WE damaged his flooring, never provided a forwarding address, and had pets there against the lease. 1) we have images and records of texts to him showing the damage to the floors from the day we moved in (we moved out of state and his listing online was false images. We were also desperate and didn’t know our rights at the time). This also shows how he never fixed them at all during our lease, and now he’s blaming us and asking for us to reimburse him (no dude I literally sliced my Finger open on those damn staples). He did nothing to fix the floors at any point, and they were that way upon move in.

2) we have screenshots of text messages providing a forwarding address to him, which he acknowledged right after. He claims we never provided one and prevented him from Sending any of our deposit (which he always did online transactions anyway so he’s a liar). He also never acknowledge us until after 30 days and after we had hounded him mad about it.

3) He never gave us a pet agreement to sign but we have record of paying him the pet deposit. We also have record of me asking about things like pet rent and restrictions…. Obviously we wouldn’t move in if they weren’t allowed. He kept our deposit… does this make it a mutual agreement even though he never sent a formal contract? Yes, I know we should have put something in formal writing but we were desperate as we have a very short turnaround for move, and he told us he’d get an agreement (via phone call), and he never did. We had never had bad landlords (lucky until this point) and thought we could trust him (wrong!). When we did move in and saw all of the damage that slipped to the back of our priority list.

I’ve called the lawyer team we’ve been working with, but I’m waiting for a callback and am Sitting here anxious and mad. Confident because we literally have evidence disputing his claims, but nervous that for whatever reason a judge won’t side with us. Sorry I have anxiety and am Overthinking. Just needed a place to vent and also get some expertise on the meantime.

Thanks for reading