The link is to an article in the local paper about new home construction in a McMansion-wannabe development in Little Rock. Here are the first few paragraphs:
“Renaissance Homes Inc. finished construction on a 5,424-square-foot home in The Ranch subdivision in January 2005. But no one has ever lived there. Instead of moving vans, litigation ensued.
“The driveway has collapsed into airspace below the foundation and the garage, according to a structural engineer, will not support the weight of a car. The city refused to issue a certificate of occupancy after its inspector’s notices of framing and foundation code violations were disregarded.
“The builders, who deny the city’s claim and say the owners of the house owe them money, filed a foreclosure suit shortly after completing the house. The owners countersued for breach of contract and negligence. The city ducked out when the lawsuits were filed, letting private engineering experts take over.
“City code manager Chuck Givens said, however, that there’s no record that Renaissance corrected deficiencies found by its inspector. Code violations included problems in the garage slab, the garage retaining wall, the driveway and first floor framing.
“That the driveway concrete has collapsed is not disputed; only the party at fault is. [Engineer Edward] Grubbs found fill dirt had settled as deep as 7 inches beneath the driveway slab. Grubbs also found vertical cracks in a retaining wall and footings that may shift in case of frost heave.
“Engineers have also noted that the foundation for the house, which is built on an angle of 24.7 degrees, is sloped, rather than stepped, which could make the house slip down the ridge it occupies.”
http://arktimes.com/Articles/ArticleViewer.aspx?ArticleID=6d25278d-ca2b-4ef1-90f0-bb6866494abf
Replies
"A four-day trial has been set to start Tuesday, Aug. 29."
What's happened? The trial should be over, but I could not anything newer.
A jury awarded the Greenings $600,000 -- $400,000 for breach of contract against Renaissance and $200,000 against Brandon Tedder, RH head, for negligence. Still at issue is recission -- how to deal with the property itself.
FWIW, adding negligence claims for damages to what are essentially contract disputes is a poor development in the law, IMO.I suppose there are times it makes sense, but my impression (and I haven't really looked into this) is that the negligence is usually added to jack up the amount of recoverable damages.Contract damages are usually pretty straight forward, mainly with wrangling over which expert to accept.Damages for neg are far more loosey-goosey.A very old rule for contract damages is that the party being held liable should have been able to know/predict what the damages would be for any given breach and price accordingly. That, for example, is why the general rule is that you can't recover for lost profits.
Fighting Ignorance since 1967
It's taking way longer than we thought
Interesting.Looking from the orginal article it appears that the damages where enough to pay for their out of pocket expenses; ie, the amount that they already paid the builder.And that the negligence is more than enough (but probably not after cost) to pay for tear down and puting them back to position they where before the construction started.
I have to admit that the rescission issue and factors involved in that sort of issue seem to gone the way of much of my 60's memories <G>This might more of a contract remedy concept, but I'm thinking the goal of rescission is "to put the party in the condition he would have been in but for the breach."One question I'll betcha being argued is the sloped footing v stepped footing.It looks like that was not called out by the AHJ. Assume stepped aren't required under local code, but the engineering expert says it should have been done given the conditions.Compare if local code required it but the AHJ missed it.And compare if stepped aren't required under local code, but the engineering expert says it would be best practice given the conditions.As they say, one lawyer in town will go broke; two lawyers and they both prosper <G>
Fighting Ignorance since 1967
It's taking way longer than we thought
It's amazing that the builder's attorney even allowed this to go to trial. If they didn't have the funds to fix the problems and settle before the trial, they certainly are up the creek now after that $600K award. My guess is the builder will declare bankruptcy or leave AR in the middle of the night. The homeowners will be lucky if they ever get a dime out of these shysters.
Purely from the point of view of someone reading the post with no particular knowledge, my comment is that if the house was built without correcting deficiencies as spelled out by the inspector, then the homeowner shouldn't have to pay one cent, since most jurisdicitions have some sort of legislation regarding selling goods "fit for the purpose for which they are intended". However, being in Little Rock, god only knows what the rules are.