Landlord refuses to pay for fallen cabinets. Advice?

rusty

So my girlfriend was cooking one night last week when the kitchen cabinets above her fell off of the wall on top of her. Turns out that they had been fastened to the wall with nails (instead of screws) in a very shoddy way.

Her landlord, after seeing the damage, maintains that it is "impossible" for the cabinets to have fallen off and that she must have done something to make that happen. Thus, as he sees it, he's not responsible for replacing them.

I'm wondering if people out there have a good idea of how this will play out. We're meeting the landlord to try and negotiate tonight, but I suppose we could lodge a complaint with the department of housing, or make the repairs and deduct it from the rent etc. I'm wondering how time consuming and soul crushing this stuff will be.

Oh yes, here are pictures:
the back of a fallen cabinet:
http://share.shutterfly.com/action/slideshow?a=67b0de21b35a0312a4d7&auto=0&idx=39&m=1&d=1195844583596

the mounting on the wall showing the bent nails:
http://share.shutterfly.com/action/slideshow?a=67b0de21b35a0312a4d7&auto=0&idx=29&m=1&d=1195844751692
[/img]

lydiabrunch

I would call these folks for advice:

http://www.cwtfhc.org/about.html

I'm currently suing my landlord for repairs and they were very helpful.