Dozens of former residents of The Cooper inched forward Wednesday in their quest to reconnect with their belongings after a fire left the Fort Worth apartment complex uninhabitable.<\/p>\n
A group of 59 tenants want a temporary injunction to stop The Cooper\u2019s owners and management from destroying or disposing of the contents from their former apartments. They said legal reassurance is necessary because of \u201cmajor distrust\u201d of the companies.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re just simply saying that they can\u2019t unilaterally decide to destroy everyone\u2019s personal property,\u201d said Ty Stimpson, an attorney representing the tenants.<\/p>\n
After two days of arguments and testimonies<\/a>, Judge Christopher Taylor of Tarrant County\u2019s 48th District Court said Wednesday afternoon he intends to issue a decision by Monday that will satisfy both sides.<\/p>\n Taylor said he plans to carefully draft a temporary injunction that would grant tenants assurance that their property wouldn\u2019t be needlessly destroyed and would not slow the progress of Cooper construction crews.<\/p>\n Roger Diseker, an attorney representing The Cooper\u2019s owners and property management, argued that an injunction would only complicate matters as management is already doing everything it can, which includes providing 24\/7 security at the property and erecting a 6-foot-tall chain link fence around its perimeter.<\/p>\n Diseker said no one from The Cooper wants to destroy tenants\u2019 belongings without cause.<\/p>\n However, if construction crews are barred from disposing of tenants\u2019 property, he said, that would heavily hinder their progress in clearing debris from the building and assessing its structural safety. Because some apartment units were destroyed in the fire, many personal items are lost in the rubble and must be removed, he added.<\/p>\n \u201cI argue against an injunction that is going to cause more problems than it will solve,\u201d Diseker said.<\/p>\n The tenants\u2019 request is part of their lawsuit against The Cooper\u2019s owners and current and former property management, and the electricians they allege are responsible for a six-alarm fire at the complex June 23. The lawsuit alleges that recklessness and negligence<\/a> from an electrician not fully trained caused the fire that displaced more than 800 tenants and seeks $1 million in damages.<\/p>\n During Wednesday\u2019s hearing, the tenants\u2019 attorneys said they were seeking legal reassurance that their clients\u2019 personal belongings wouldn\u2019t be destroyed without permission and that The Cooper provides reasonable security on the property. They asked that if the apartment buildings are demolished, The Cooper must allow tenants to first inspect their possessions, if physically safe to do so.<\/p>\n The request for an injunction, filed Aug. 6, came after The Cooper\u2019s property management notified tenants July 31 that Building 1, where the fire took place, was unsafe to enter due to mold and other health hazards<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Cooper told some tenants their apartments were a total loss and that their personal belongings would be destroyed<\/a>. Other tenants were told their units were still being assessed.<\/p>\n The property\u2019s second building has since been deemed safe for tenants to retrieve their belongings and that effort is ongoing.<\/p>\n In the seven weeks since the fire, displaced tenants have demanded transparency and accountability<\/a> from The Cooper\u2019s management, which they claimed had been \u201cradio silent.\u201d<\/p>\n Cecilia Lenzen is a government accountability reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact her at cecilia.lenzen@fortworthreport.org<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here<\/a>.<\/p>\n This article<\/a> first appeared on Fort Worth Report<\/a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dozens of former residents of The Cooper inched forward Wednesday in their quest to reconnect with their belongings…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":164006,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5138],"tags":[5229,7371,7372,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-164005","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fort-worth","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-fort-worth","10":"tag-fortworth","11":"tag-texas","12":"tag-tx","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-united-states-of-america","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","17":"tag-us","18":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115067293843776107","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164005\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}