A Dallas attorney is claiming a letter purportedly notifying his client of a change in a hearing date in her eviction case was forged.
Local attorney Mark Melton’s client, Chantel Hardaway, was initially scheduled to appear in court on June 15 before Judge Margaret O’Brien for an eviction hearing case between the single mother of seven and her landlord.
However, Hardaway’s landlord asked for a postponement, and a new hearing date was set for July 27. When Hardaway failed to show up for the hearing on the new date, the court entered a default judgment against her.
Hardaway now claims she didn’t hear about the hearing because she never got the letter telling her of the new trial date. While O’Brien and court clerk Lutishia Williams maintained the letter found in Hardaway’s court file showing the new date was legitimate, Melton claimed otherwise and said he got a tip from an anonymous source that the letter was indeed forged and his client never got the notice.
Melton did not reveal his tipster’s identity but said he was the husband of one of O’Brien’s clerks.
Melton requested that the default judgment be set aside so his client could tell the court her version of events. O’Brien, however, rejected Melton’s request, prompting the attorney to demand the court turn over the notice they sent Hardaway about the hearing date.
Melton said the notification on the court file was different from the others he had seen and that it was typed using the Microsoft Word program instead of Forvus, which is the usual system used to fill such notice. Melton claimed the notice included the court’s seal on the letterhead, which is very unusual.
Melton also deposed four staff in O’Brien’s court, and one of them, Wendy Lopez, told the attorney that it was unusual for such notices to be typed up in Word.
“The only Word documents that were ever sent were during the pandemic when they were being held virtually or telephonically,” Lopez said in a video of the deposition obtained by the Dallas Observer. “If it’s an in-person hearing, then it’s a system-generated document.”
Lopez, the civil clerk in O’Brien’s court, said it is common for people who fail to show up to their hearing to claim that they didn’t get a notice. She added that when those cases arise, she simply opens the affected person’s file with the court and shows them a copy of the notice. However, when she opened Hardaway’s file, she did not see a copy of the notice she should have gotten.
Lopez added that she saw the notice for the first time amongst Hardaway’s file when Melton began asking questions.
“I’m adamant that that letter was not there when Ms. Hardaway filed that motion,” Lopez insisted. “And there’s no way I could not have seen that letter.”
Tanya Carter, the traffic clerk in O’Brien’s court, gave similar testimony. She said Hardaway first came to her in early August asking about a writ of possession placed on her door. Carter said she grabbed Hardaway’s file and handed it to her so she could see a copy had been sent but couldn’t find it.
“I’ve been trained to make sure that I stand there to make sure nothing is being taken out of the file, and that’s exactly what I did. While Ms. Hardaway went front to back through the file, we both discovered nothing was there,” Carter said.
Carter said she dismissed Hardaway and told her the constable would be coming when she didn’t know what else to say. She added that she felt bad for the single mother of seven because there didn’t seem to be a single proof that the hearing date notice was sent.
Carter maintained that she was sure the notice was not in Hardaway’s file when she first came in.
“As far as I’m concerned, it could have been resolved,” Carter said. “I make errors. We all make errors. If this was an error, it could have been ‘Hey, this is my mistake,’ and it could have been cleared up.”
Lopez and Carter said they didn’t bring the case up to Chief Clark Lutishia Williams, who filed the notice in question, because they feared retaliation.
“That would cause retaliation, put a target on yourself,” Lopez said, “You’re going to piss off Lutishia, which is your supervisor, and, honestly, Judge O’Brien probably wouldn’t have believed it … or that there’s any harm coming from Lutishia.”
However, Williams said the court typed out Hardaway’s notice in Word because she had a habit of missing court hearings.
Williams showed the Dallas Observer a file that contained several pages with Hardaway’s eviction history dating back to 2018. She added that Hardaway did not appear for her first eviction hearing and many others that followed.
She also admitted that many of the court’s notices are generated in Forvus, which, according to Williams, is a record-keeping of all Dallas County JP cases.
“That’s the current system as of now, but that is due to change in October,” Williams said.
Williams added that Hardaway had been sent these system-generated notices before in the cases she failed to appear in court and that the court had to send the letter-headed Word copy to grab her attention.
“I did something strategic in this on the notification, given the past history of the defendant not showing up to court, not really paying very much attention to the citation or any notification,” Williams said. “I actually sent this defendant the original, which had a giant copy stamp in red with my signature in blue to show her ‘Hello, hello, hello.’ And then I put a copy in the case jacket. That is how that was done.”
Williams and O’Brien maintained that there was nothing shady about the notice sent to Hardaway and that the court sends out those kinds of notices in urgent situations. Williams added that her only mistake was not making a copy of the envelope.
“It’s always case by case,” Williams said. “And in my opinion, this was a serious situation, and I’ve already given the factors.”
O’Brien also noted that the Forvus notifications are limited regarding the number of characters that can be included in them, thus making it impossible to alert plaintiffs and defendants with a Forvus-generated notification.
Williams revealed that when the landlord first requested a postponement, she suggested that they do a hearing by phone, but the plaintiff refused and said they’d prefer a new date instead, owing to the severity of the case.
Williams said she typed the notice herself on June 14, one day before the original date, and mailed it out the following day. It is unclear if Hardaway showed up in court or if she knew of her landlord’s request to postpone the hearing. However, Williams said she called Hardaway’s name when she read the docket on June 15 and that if Hardaway had been in court, she would have notified her in person about the new hearing date.
Williams also addressed Lopez and Carter’s claim of retaliation, saying they could have spoken to the judge if they had concerns.
“We’ve had clerks send things to her (O’Brien), not about fraudulent stuff, but just other things,” Williams said. “So, it’s not like she doesn’t respond. They have her email. They know where she’s at.”
O’Brien maintained that she would not “intentionally deprive someone of their right” and does everything she can for those facing eviction who come to her court.
“Nobody wants anyone to be evicted, OK? If they want to actually do something, they should change the legislation. I can’t rewrite the rules. I just have to enforce them,” she explained.
Melton took to his social media page to rebuff Williams’ claims about his client’s no-show history. Melton claimed that Williams could not have known of Hardaway’s eviction hearing history at the time she claimed to have sent the notice because courts don’t pull a tenant’s litigation history in advance of a hearing.
Melton also claimed that the document presented as proof of his client’s no-show history was from a 2021 eviction case where the tenant actually appeared in court and the landlord did not because rent assistance came through before the court date. The attorney added that the case was dismissed.
Melton revealed that while Williams told the Dallas Observer she had typed the letter on June 14 and mailed it the next day, she told him she mailed it the same day she typed it.
“It’s kind of a dog ate my homework excuse,” Melton said of the court’s denial. “It’s just a ridiculous statement.”
The Dallas County District Attorney’s Office has not said if it is investigating the case.
