I just moved out of a 2 bedroom apartment build in the 60's that was utterly disgusting. When I moved in, there was mold all over the place, cockroach infestations, cracks in the walls that were lightly plastered over with no fresh paint, spots in the nasty old carpet, etc.
I sent an email a month after moving in to the manager asking, begging, to have the lease terminated so we could find a place that was live-able. They declined. I looked online at reviews of the apartment complex and they were all terrible, and they all said the same shit I was living with; Bugs, mold, cracks, dirt, crime, etc.
I lived there for one year, got out of there as fast as I could. The whole time I lived there, after that email, I kept my mouth shut. I didn't complain about the bugs, I didn't complain about the sketchy neighbors, I didn't complain about the mold, I just bit my tongue and waited until the day my lease was up. I did take pictures of it all though, just in case.
I moved to my new apartment, a very nice quality apartment in a much better part of town. Some of the roaches ended up hitch hiking to my new place, so I am now dealing with that as well.
Now today, I get a letter in the mail billing me $572. For things like: New carpet, cracks in wall repair, repainting, exterminator, etc.
Do I have a legal case against this? Honestly, I think I left that apartment in better shape than I came into it in. I cleaned a lot of mold, bombed the place multiple times, did better spackle jobs on some of the cracks and holes in walls, etc.