*A man living in an apartment in suburban Dallas with his daughter says all of their belongings were thrown into a dumpster after management accidentally ordered maintenance to clear it out.
According to Dallas’ KDFW FOX4, the apartment management evicted the wrong unit number. And now Johnny Abney, who says he spent years building a life for himself and his 9-year-old daughter, has lost everything they own after it was erroneously tossed and picked over by other tenants.
“Clothing items. All of my groceries. They cleared out my refrigerator full of groceries,” he said. “Right down to the shower curtain.”
They dumping was ordered by management at The Hamilton, a high-end mid-rise apartment building where Abney lived in the Deep Ellum neighborhood of Dallas. “They came to my door and cleaned everything out from my clothes to my daughter’s clothes, toothbrush, bathing items, pretty much left me with nothing,” he said.
“Not only did they put my stuff out. They watched people take my property all day,” Abney added.
Abney filed a police report upon returning home from work in late July to find his apartment door unlocked and his stuff cleared out. According to the report, a leasing agent on site said “there was a misunderstanding, and maintenance accidentally cleared out Abney’s unit” instead of the unit next door where a tenant was being evicted. All of Abney’s belongings had been thrown in the dumpster hours earlier and rummaged through by other residents.
Property management offered to get what they could from the dumpster and return it, including, they say, a stained mattress professionally cleaned. But Abney said that most of his and his daughter’s stuff were gone for good, and what did make it back to their residence was damaged.
“They told me it was a mistake. They apologized,” Abney said. “They were overly apologetic. ‘Let us know if anything’s missing.’” But that good will didn’t last long.
Abney recorded a conversation he had with one of the leasing agents who pointed out that the he and his daughter shouldn’t have been living in that apartment anyway, because it was leased by his ex-girlfriend who had since moved out of state. Abney was subletting for nearly $3,000 in rent each month without permission.
According to this lawsuit Abney has now filed against the property management company, they gave him 24 hours to fill out his own rental application or face eviction. Abney’s attorney, Jason Freidman, says the issue of who was on the lease is irrelevant.
“The rent was paid in full. There was no reason to go into his apartment. There was no reason to throw anything away,” he said. “The apartment building didn’t know when they threw all of that stuff away who’s stuff it was, whether it was the person on the lease or his.”
Freidman says Abney chose not to fill out the application or pay the fee required, “because he wanted to resolve the situation with the property that you threw away before I decide if I’m going to stay in this building,” Freidman said.
An attorney for The Hamilton told Fox5 that even if Abney did fill out the rental application, he would have been denied because he already violated the lease terms as an unauthorized occupant.
FOX 4 sent a list of questions to The Hamilton via their attorney, which went unanswered. They would not sit down with us for an interview. They did say they asked Abney for a list of what was missing from his fridge to establish a value for reimbursement. Abney says that never happened. He did move out days after we met with him. He and his daughter are temporarily staying with family.
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