| Dave (Dave) | Tuesday, October 14, 2003 - 12:37 pm
Looking for cases involving fraudulent conversion of property by storage
faciliites
As we all invariably know, when low-income families have been evicted by
City Marshals their property is often placed in local storage facilities.
These facilities often destroy or auction the property in violation of state
law requiring notice to the property owner prior to the facility taking any
such action. In many instances, the local welfare offices (NYC Human
Resources Administration) is responsible for paying the storage fees for
individuals of low-income who have been evicted. Delays in payments, or
failure on the part of HRA to make these payments altogether, often gives
rise to the unlawful conversion of the property by the storage facilities
(under state law, even in the event of non-payment of storage fees, the
owner of the personal property must receive notice from the facility of any
steps it plans to take prior to auctioning off or destroying the property).
This cycle of events plays out literally every day throughout the five
boroughs, impacting thousands of low-income New Yorkers a year.
With the assistance of a law firm that has already been identified, we would
like to gather concrete examples of these activities, and present some cases
to local district attorneys' offices to ask them to pursue some of the worst
offending storage facilities. If you have situations like this, and could
send a brief description of the case, the name and address of the storage
facility, and whether or not you are still in touch with your client, we
will be in touch with you to help us compile such stories and try to
determine if names of some of the same storage facilities keep coming up.
If you have such stories, or want more information, please contact Ray
Brescia at www.urbanjustice.org.
Thank you. |