stolen property from apartment storage room

stolen property from apartment storage room by david drake (georgia) on October 31, 2009 @09:06

my girlfriend and i lived in a apartment community in orlando fl. she also worked as a leasing agent on the property. we went through some personal isues and when i went out of town she moved out and quit her job. she left all of my belongings in the property and took her's. when i got back in town i went to the apartment and was greeted by two maintnance men in our apartment. they told me she moved out and i had to leave the propert because i wasnt on the lease. my girl and i thought i was on the lease because i filled out all the paper work and a criminal and finacial background check was ran. apparently i didnt sign another form to confirm the contract. anyways... i was told that only my girlfriend could remove the property. she was in atlanta and i was stuck in orlando. i had very exspensive home theatre and musical equipment in the property with the value of over $15,000. my girlfriend called numberous times begging management to allow me to get my stuff because she couldnt come back to orlando. management told her that they would hold my property in a storage room for 30 days. i was not with them when they removed my property. i didnt even know they had storage rooms on the property. 4 days before the 30th day came, my girlfriend gets a call from the police dept telling her that the storage room was broken into and thay everything except for clothes and small storage bins were stolen. we called hr and loss managment and raised hell. they appologized and said they would file an insurance claim and everything would be taken care of. 45 days later... my claim was denied. insurance company denied liability. they told me their not responsible for third party liability. pretty much saying the theif is liable. i also found out the property is self insured.

if you managed this property would you have taken property from previous resident that moved out and placed it in a storage room on the property for 30 days?

dont you think the property is responsible if they took responsiblity for the property?

sorry for the long report :(

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Re: stolen property from apartment storage room by Anonymous on October 31, 2009 @10:51	[ Reply ]
I'm sorry but when you live in these kind of relationships all kinds of bad problems develop every time. Just be glad there were no innocent children involved.

Re: stolen property from apartment storage room

Re: stolen property from apartment storage room by Va Landlady (VA) on October 31, 2009 @11:13	[ Reply ]
I'm sorry but this looks like a case of "coulda, woulda, shoulda"...you SHOULD have made sure you had a signed lease, and you SHOULD have gotten renters' insurance. I'll be surprised if there's much you can do about your lost stuff. If you weren't on the lease I just don't see what you can do. I guess you COULD take the management to small claims court, but...

Re: stolen property from apartment storage room

Re: stolen property from apartment storage room by Anonymous on October 31, 2009 @15:32	[ Reply ]
Your renter's insurance should cover your belongings. Don't have renter's insurance? That's a chance you take. As you said, you could go to small claims court. Girlfriend would have to be there for you to have any sort of case though. Then still up in the air whether they would be found liable or not, since it was 3rd party theft.

Re: stolen property from apartment storage room by OK-LL on November 1, 2009 @10:34

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Boiled down and viewed from the PMs vantage point: The only tenant on the rental agreement left the property (breaking a lease or without property notice on M2M?) and abandoned the personal property in the unit. Under law, the LL must store the property for XX days until tenant pays for storage and retrieves the property.

If she intended you to collect her abandoned property, she should have paid any storage costs and provided the LL with written instructions on disposition -- such as "Joe Blow is going to be there on XX/XX/XXXX at X:XX o'clock to move the items." Or if she really intended you to get your things back, she could have devoted a weekend to traveling from Atlanta to Orlando to take care of this in person.

Next time, cross your t's and dot your i's (get your paperwork completed in full and properly) and you won't have these problems.

Re: stolen property from apartment storage room by OK-LL on November 1, 2009 @10:35	[ Reply ]
Oh, yeah. And when the property is stolen from storage, the facility is not responsible for the theft. Your renter's insurance may or may not have covered the property once it was moved to storage, but that's the chance you take in a situation like this. What were either of you doing that you couldn't handle this in person and timely?