Callaway House at Texas A&M
A 19-year-old Texas A&M business student has sued the owner and operator of an upscale private dormitory called The Callaway House claiming that her room and other areas of the housing unit are contaminated with toxic mold.
Lawyers involved in the litigation say that other students who have lived in the Callaway House dorm will likely file lawsuits regarding mold in the next two months.
In a 16-page lawsuit filed Thursday evening in Brazos County District Court, Katherine Kristofek, a Texas A&M freshman from Dallas, claims that American Campus Communities knew that the dorm had high levels of toxic mold that was causing severe health issues with students but did nothing about it.
“So awful and prevalent is this condition, that students resort to macabre humor, naming the symptoms they experience ‘the Callaway Cough,’” Dallas trial lawyer Jeff Tillotson states in the complaint. “Obvious mold appears in vents and yet complaints are swept under the rug. Worse, defendants told student employees to deny the existence of mold — which was plainly visible — and simply tried to spray paint over it.”
American Campus Communities officials have not yet responded to requests for a comment.
Kristofek rented a dorm room in August for $2,700 a month – more than double the average cost of student housing in College Station, according to the lawsuit.
But she immediately started feeling sick and was diagnosed by medical doctors with symptoms and chronic illness “consistent with exposure to toxic mold,” according to court documents.
“Almost as soon as she moved in, she — like many Callaway House residents — began experiencing a host of symptoms including severe headaches, trouble breathing, cognitive and memory deficits, bodily numbness, nausea and vomiting and loss of vision,” the lawsuit states. “The indifference to her suffering has cast a long and terrible shadow over her entire first year at Texas A&M, turning what she thought was a dream school into a health nightmare.”
The defendant, American Campus Communities, is a portfolio company of private equity giant Blackstone and claims to be the largest developer and owner of student housing in the U.S. The ACC website states that it has 203 “student communities” on 93 campuses and has an enterprise value of $11.6 billion.
ACC has five dorms just off the Texas A&M campus and does not appear to have any specific financial ties to the university. The company also has dormitories at Baylor University, Texas State, Texas Tech, the University of Houston, the University of Texas in Austin and the University of North Texas.
In an interview late Thursday, Tillotson said Kristofek is not his only client at the Callaway House and that more lawsuits may follow.