Here’s a great landlord tenant article about personal belongings that remained in a property, written by Janet Portman of the Chicago Tribune.
Q. My landlord tried to evict me for violations of the lease, but in the middle of the unlawful detainer lawsuit we settled. I agreed to move out, and he agreed to drop the lawsuit. Part of the written agreement said that I would abandon any belongings I left behind.
When I moved out, I wasn’t able to move all of my stuff. I came back and asked for it, but the landlord said, “No.” But in my state, landlords have to store tenants’ belongings and tell them how to get the stuff back. Shouldn’t the landlord have followed this procedure? Now he’s telling me that I can have it back if I agree not to sue him.
A. The answers to your question lie in what, exactly, you signed and on the nature of your state’s law on abandoned property.
The agreement you signed was probably a “stipulated settlement,” in which each party to the lawsuit agreed to do specified things in order for the lawsuit to be dismissed. Like a contract, each party both gives and gets something. In your case, you agreed to move out in exchange for not having to go through the lawsuit, and the landlord agreed to drop the lawsuit in exchange for your departure.
But the landlord added another “get” to his side of the bargain: You apparently agreed to forfeit any ownership interest you may have had in anything left behind. This excused the landlord from any obligations that state law might impose on him regarding the handling of tenants’ leftover property.
Did you notice the emphasis above on “apparently”? If the stipulation merely stated that any belongings left behind would be deemed “abandoned,” then you may not have forfeited any ownership rights at all. That is, by agreeing that leftover stuff would be considered abandoned, you may have simply been restating what the law already knows, that tenants’ property left behind is “abandoned” property.
That’s a far cry from saying that you give up any rights state law may give you to get it back. Without seeing the stipulation, it’s impossible to know whether you were truly giving up ownership rights or simply restating the law (that belongings left behind are deemed abandoned).
Let’s look at each possibility. If the stipulation means that you’ve given up any recapture rights, then whether this decision seals your fate depends on your state’s law concerning landlords’ treatment of abandoned property. May the parties waive the procedure described in the statute or is it the type of right (like your right to a fit and habitable home) that the law will not allow landlords and tenants to modify? If the former, then your agreement in the stipulation to give up any ownership rights will stick, and you’re out of luck.
On the other hand, if state law will not uphold a tenant’s waiver of the process whereby he can recover his belongings, then the stipulation has no effect. That’s a long shot, however, because the judge in the eviction lawsuit had to review the stipulation. Presumably, a judge would not approve a settlement in which you agreed to waive a right that cannot legally be waived.
Now, what about the other possibility, that the stipulation is merely your acknowledgement that anything left behind is deemed “abandoned”? If that’s how the stipulation should be understood, then must your landlord handle and return the items according to state law? Again, it depends on your state’s law.
Some states provide for a very orderly process for the handling, storage and return of tenants’ belongings, but it’s not mandatory. It simply gives landlords a process that will shield them from liability if a tenant later tries to sue over discarded items. Landlords may choose not to follow the system (a classic “safe harbor”) and may instead take their chances if tenants later sue to recover property or for damages due to the property’s destruction.
If your state has set up a system like this, your landlord was free to handle your leftovers as he saw fit. But if your state requires landlords to handle property in a certain way, your landlord has possibly violated the law, and you may have a case against him.
Often there are situations that may possibly put a tenant in harms way. Residents can report illegal/unsafe construction work and improper building use by calling 311. Read more about at the 
