A Mesquite mother who claims a court fabricated a hearing notice to justify her eviction is still waiting for justice — and trying to educate other mothers — a year after the Dallas County District Attorney’s office launched an investigation.
Chantel Hardaway told The Dallas Morning News in an interview Friday that she and her seven children have tried to put the nightmare of being forced from their home behind them.
Lutishia Williams, the chief clerk for Judge Margaret O’Brien, is accused in a lawsuit of faking the notice that Hardaway said she never received.
Hardaway, who now lives with her kids in a quiet home, said she tries to help other mothers who are heads of their households avoid the same problems she faced: A court system that’s stacked against tenants, especially working mothers like her who often lack the means to fight back.
“It makes me not trust in the justice system,” Hardaway said. “For the situation that happened, I don’t feel that it’s really safe for anyone.”
Hardaway says justice of the peace courts like the one that heard her case often rule in favor of landlords, especially when tenants don’t know the legal procedures and are ill-equipped to defend themselves.
“Time, date and stamp everything in today’s world,” Hardaway said, citing advice she tells fellow renters. Documenting every detail, especially names of court personnel, is the best method, she added.
Public integrity probe
The Dallas County District Attorney’s office is on its own fact-finding mission to discover if any crime was committed related to her eviction, and by whom. The DA’s public integrity unit seized items in September at the courthouse in Garland, according to an October email from Williams.
“JP 2-1 Court will confirm that Dallas County issued a search warrant and seized its own equipment for an investigation,” Williams said.
Williams did not say what items were removed for the investigation except to note that none belonged to or were used by O’Brien. She declined to comment further.
O’Brien denied any wrongdoing in a Sept. 7, 2022 statement to The News but has declined to comment on the DA’s recent seizure of items from her court.
The District Attorney’s office declined to comment.
“Unfortunately, as a general rule, the DA’s Office does not comment on cases that may or may not be under ongoing investigation,” said Claire Crouch, the DA’s media and community relations manager.
An attorney for Hardaway says he’s not sure what charges the DA could bring – and against whom – but he takes the seizure as a promising sign.
“After more than a year of them investigating, I’m glad to see the district attorney’s office is taking public integrity seriously,” said Mark Melton with Dallas Eviction Advocacy Center.
Melton says Hardaway’s case is built upon strong evidence – including depositions from other court clerks saying they do not believe the hearing notice placed in Hardaway’s file was one normally produced by the court, which are computer-generated notices.
The hearing notice alleged to be fake is a Microsoft Word-generated document dated June 14 and signed by Williams.
Allegations of forgery
O’Brien said in a 2022 statement that Hardaway received notice of her hearing date in person by “hand delivery” and failed to show up, and “there is no indication of court documents being falsified.”
Hardaway’s original eviction hearing, on June 15, 2022, was rescheduled for July 27 at the landlord’s request. The court notified the landlord of the new date but not Hardaway, the suit alleges.
Hardaway learned of the missed hearing on Aug. 4 when she was served with a 24-hour notice to vacate her home after O’Brien’s court issued an eviction in the landlord’s favor, according to the lawsuit. One day later, Hardaway filed a motion to stop the eviction, which O’Brien denied that same day.
Hardaway said in the suit that she asked a court clerk to review her eviction case file and found no evidence of a notice sent by the court. Melton, her lawyer, then filed a motion Aug. 5 to set aside the default judgment, claiming Hardaway was denied due process.
In the lawsuit, Melton states that he received an anonymous call the same day from someone claiming to be married to a clerk in O’Brien’s court. The caller said the clerks were “extremely frustrated” by the case, alleging the notice of Hardaway’s new hearing date was forged after her attorney asked to see a copy.
Melton inspected Hardaway’s case file and found a notice of a new hearing date, according to the suit. The same clerk who helped Hardaway review her case file on Aug. 5 told Melton that she “did not recall seeing that page in this file” weeks earlier, the suit alleges.
The lawsuit claims that Melton inspected other new hearing notices issued on the same date and they did not resemble the one in Hardaway’s file.
