Question about door locks, who is responsible?

[Scott Pearson]

My question is about something that happened to my daughter who is a renter.

Recently she came home from work at about 6:00pm.  When she tried to unlock the door the key broke off in the lock.  Is this her responsibility to fix or is it on the landlord/PM?

Calling a locksmiths at 6:00pm was quite unsuccessful in finding any one to come out to open the lock.  When she called the PM he said he was no where near the area and she was on her own. 

In the end he (PM) did find a locksmith to come and help my daughter get in.  But she had to go buy a new lock set to replace the one that was broken and had to be forcefully removed.  And she paid the bill of $160.

She has sent receipts to the PM for reimbursement and is waiting to see what will happen.

Is this repair on her or the landlord/PM?

Thanks,

[James Wise]

Originally posted by @Scott Pearson:

Thanks @Andrew B., @John Underwood, and @James Wise for the input.

The consensus seems to be that it is the tenant's responsibility. 

One point that I may not have been clear on in the first post is that the lock was broken and defective.  This was verified by the locksmith when he tried to open the lock.  Also my daughter was able to remove the broken key and took it to have a new key made.  Of course this new key did not work as the lock was broken.

Does this change any thinking or is it still on the tenant?

 Check the lease. Very common for the lockout policy to be outlined in the lease. In addition the fact that the locksmith said that is irrelevant. It's fairly easy for anyone standing in front of a serviceman to get the serviceman to say something like that for their customer. I'm sure if the Property Manager hired same locksmith and was the one standing there the locksmith would have had no problem blaming it on the key lol.