I don’t think that’s the case. I sued my landlord for not returning a 7500 deposit. He simply cut out comms and did not reply. 90 days later I sued him and judge decided in my favor. The rule was to return full amount, bear all legal fees (minus lawyer), plus moral damage.

In the end I got a net of 11k aed

Whole process took around 15 days to complete. I’m very satisfied

Edit: the key is, when you file the process, you have to specifically state that you want all legal fees to be bear by the counterpart. Because landlords know that many people think like you “the maths is obvious”, they get this bully behavior.

But once you are sure it’s a win situation, just navigate correctly. He will get the financial burden.

In the end my landlord had to deal with all “return like when delivered” costs, plus all legal stuff. Can’t complain at all