> For repairing a broken thing? After provably trying in vain to get the landlord to fix it?

Down the hallway from my office used to be the management of a small hotel chain. We often had lunch together and I got to hear a bunch of interesting anecdotes over the years.

Way back when they started up and didn't yet have enough cash to actually own the buildings they operated in, they rented. One of the buildings turned out to have numerous issues (holes in the roof, gaps near exterior walls, etc...). To the point that they eventually didn't pass a fire inspection. They repeatedly asked the owner to have it fixed. Pressed for time, they themselves eventually payed someone, out of their own pocket, so it would at least be up to code for the fire inspection.

From what I was told, the owner threw a tantrum over them modifying the building, terminated the contract and sued them. Successfully.

If you are a tenant in a rental apartment, you'd probably have more leniency on the legal side (compared to a company renting a business property). But still, I'd be very careful making any assumptions about the legal situation rather than risking some sort of Kafkaesque legal mess.

Over here at least, it is very common in apartment complexes that the apartment owner is a different person/entity than the building owner and only the later has the rights to mess with stuff installed in the walls (e.g. plumbing) and especially stuff elsewhere in the building (e.g. an external intercom system). If you ask the landlord to fix it, the best they could do is forward that request to the building owner. If you pulled a stunt like the OP did, there's a good chance that the building owner will sue your landlord.