Do you realize the whole episode only exists in your mind? It's just a perception of what you were going to pay for staying in that place, the only physical reality is that someone can file an eviction form at any time. You could have just talked the whole thing up to a little bit more a month than what you thought it was... There's no such thing as a security deposit and no such thing as getting it back either.

Everything your attorney told you was wrong, nobody can advise you to pay one mental number versus another mental. If it was me, I'd have quit paying 2 months before I was going to leave anyway. All they can do is bring eviction, only now the shoe is on the other foot. Now it's you bringing notice of appeal, and paying your rent into the Common Pleas Court as supersedeas bond to keep possession.

You're in this situation because of the backwards mindset of attorneys, who are always going the wrong way up a one-way street. They are illiterate, irrational, and antimathematic