Flooring Question

[Daseal]

Greetings Warpath,

We've been dealing with a saga lately and I was hoping perhaps someone on TWP may have some expertise to lend. I will expand on the situation below, but the basic question is can you replace just a small section of engineered wood floor that is glued down to a concrete slab. At most it would be 6 pieces that would have to be replaced because there is slight bowing/cracking at an edge. Overall I'd estimate the area is 1.5sq inches large. It seems to be some sort of water damage, and we think it may be from the air conditioning unit.

For a little backstory. Girlfriend recently moved our of her apartment. She left the apartment in fantastic shape and always took great care of the place. Today we got a call saying that they wanted to keep the entire security deposit because of a few issues.
1) Repainting. Fine. They discussed it before and they raised the price, but $50/Wall is not unreasonable for professional painting of the walls my girlfriend painted to different colors.
2) Scratches/Loose electrical outlet. This outlet was like that before we moved and and have pictures to prove that it was scratched up before she moved in.
3) The small area of wood floor being slightly warped/bowed. We noticed it shortly before we moved out and we should have mentioned something right away. It's a very small area and most people didn't notice the area. We did not spill any water or leave anything there that may have caused that damage. We believe, since it is right next to the hot water heater/AC unit, that the damage was caused by those units.

So I have a few followup questions in addition to 'can that small area be replaced.'

- They want to charge her to replace the entire floor. That seems unreasonable to me due to the fact that even the part that is slightly warped is very small. The floor is also at least 6 years old, perhaps more. The average engineered wood floor is estimated to last 15-20 years. Would depreciation come into play in this situation?
- There are a lot of 'fishy' signs that they're simply trying to keep the security deposit. They said that even though it will cost ~5-6K they will make a deal to only keep the security deposit. Additionally, they were very aggressive in needing an answer soon and were resistant to allowing us to have someone assess the damage. They also couldn't tell me the name of the two companies they had come give estimates.
- Is this worth fighting? Should we give up while we're 'ahead' or should this go to small claims court?

We're not trying to get out of taking care of any responsibility we have, although we feel replacing an entire floor because of a tiny section of the floor is not reasonable. Please let me know your thoughts! Thanks!