DALLAS — August marks one year since Steven Williams lost his mother.
“I’m going to defend the memory of my mother and her belongings,” said Williams of Inner City Outcry Advocacy Group.
It wasn’t until recently that Williams said his family received an eviction notice for his mother’s unit at the Upper E Apartments in Dallas.
“It was alarming because like I said, there were no notices,” said Williams.
Monday, Williams went to an eviction hearing at the Justice of the Peace under Judge Sara Martinez. He showed up, but the landlord did not. Typically, that would mean his case is dismissed, but not this time.
“With this case here, she found out they actually gave the wrong citation dates. They put the 13th of May at 11 when it should have been the 14th of May at 11,” said Williams.
Williams said the courtroom was told there was a clerical error, one the judge did not notice until toward the end of the docket.
“All her verbal dismissals, she started calling them back and saying no. She started saying what day can you come back,” said Williams.
He said his hearing was reset for May 24 along with some others, but his concern is for those who might not know about the error yet and might be impacted.
“Some of these individuals, they’re probably thinking, ‘Hey, I missed my court date. Let me just go ahead and get out. Figure out where I’m going to go.’ Some plaintiffs are probably refiling evictions thinking, ‘Hey, the leasing agent didn’t show up to court or management didn’t show up to court to represent us. We have to refile these,’” said Williams.
WFAA reached out to Judge Martinez. She said in a statement, “Due to a clerical inputting error, only plaintiffs received an incorrect court date. No cases received judgments that were to be ruled on for another day. No eviction judgments were rendered against any defendant due to the error. The three defendants affected by the error were reset to a date chosen by the defendants to accommodate their schedule. No one received an eviction judgment against them. We strive to provide excellent service. While this is an isolated incident, the court will redouble its efforts to institute additional checks to prevent future error.”
Still, as an eviction advocate himself, Williams believes more should be done.
“Ethically, she should get everybody on that docket even the ones that she dismissed. Say there was a clerical error and we’re going to rehear all the cases,” said Williams. “There are a lot of inconveniences. There were individuals saying that they got off work. There were individuals saying that they had to pay for transportation.”
For Williams, the biggest inconvenience is waiting longer for closure on his mother’s apartment.
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