Lennar also filed this lawsuit in January against 25 companies accused of making, importing, and distributing Chinese drywall (click here to read a statement Lennar released after filing the suit). Among them is Miami-based Banner Supply Co., which is accused of distributing a majority of the Chinese drywall in South Florida. Banner Supply owner Jack Landers declined to comment. "We're still in litigation and still investigating the matter," Landers said from his home in Fort Lauderdale.
Homeowners have also begun filing suit, and attorneys across the country want the federal court system to set up a class-action lawsuit against developers and suppliers. Among the lawsuits is this one, filed March 23 by four Miami homeowners against Lennar and its drywall suppliers. The suit claims the drywall creates "noxious, rotten egg-like odors," causes damage and corrosion to the home, and has "dangerous health consequences" including respiratory and sinus problems.
C. Stiles
Schnee and Riesz worry that their home could be making their family sick.
Eric Barton
Drywall below the intercom in Schnee's and Riesz's home is stamped with the words: "Tianjin China."
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Don Russo, the Miami attorney who filed the suit, has joined the calls to have state and federal health officials study Chinese drywall. Such research could help homeowners prove that problems stem from their defective walls.
Government studies could also help figure out if builders like Lennar and suppliers including Banner knew in advance that Chinese drywall was defective. That's not a conclusion that's likely to come out of the lawsuits. If it turns out that Lennar and others knew that the drywall was defective, insurance companies would deem it fraud and no longer cover the loss. So attorneys suing the developers and suppliers will avoid asking questions.
Indeed, Russo acknowledges that it's not something he'll ask in his suit against Lennar and the suppliers. But he says he doesn't believe that the companies installed it knowing it would lead to these problems. "They may have had an idea that it corrodes metal, but I doubt they knew the full extent of it," Russo says. However, he acknowledges that the suppliers must have known something was wrong. "There's no way, especially in a warehouse full of it, that they couldn't know. You would think that evidence would be there."
Lennar was perhaps the first builder to offer to fix homes with Chinese drywall, but the deal comes with a catch. The company, among the nation's largest homebuilders, requires homeowners to sign this six-page agreement promising that the homeowners will be put up in comparable housing while costly repairs are finished. However, in exchange, homeowners must promise they won't sue, even if later they develop long-term health problems.
Things are worse for homeowners who bought WCI houses. With the company in bankruptcy, WCI has no money for homeowners to go after. Entire WCI communities, such as Parkland Estates and Banyan Isles, might end up with hundreds of homeowners simply walking away from their sick houses.
Riesz and Schnee recently withdrew their suit against WCI, knowing that it's impossible to get money from a company that doesn't have any. They're continuing the lawsuit against Chinese drywall manufacturer Knauf Plasterboard Tianjin. But they know it'll be difficult to get a foreign company to pay for repairs.
Meanwhile, they're trying to figure out how long to stick it out in the 5,000-square-foot home they bought for $1.5 million just two years ago. They had to replace the air conditioner recently, but more important is whether what's causing the corrosion is making the family sick.
Schnee actually went into labor the night Reisz told her about finding the Chinese drywall. Now she's worried about whether her home is hurting her 2-month-old.
"I could live with the expense of replacing the appliances. I could live with the odor we get in here sometimes," Schnee says. "I could live with all those things. But not if I know it harms my kids."
