A Plethora of Homeowners Claim Construction Defects

A home is not like a toaster. If there’s a defect in a toaster, you can easily buy a new one. But construction defects in their home can have a devastating impact on a family’s life.

This may explain the spate of lawsuits against California’s largest home builder, Kaufman & Broad. But maybe the firm’s general counsel, Barton Pachino, has a point, too, when he says advertising and promotion by lawyers have something to do with it.

This is a column that started with a chance conversation with a friend of a friend. Bennett Mintz said he and 290 other condo owners in the California West Community Assn. near the Santa Susana Pass are suing Kaufman & Broad.

When it filed its suit last year, the homeowner’s group acted just before the 10-year statute of limitations on California’s law of strict home builder liability would have expired, Mintz said, and he invited me over to see the defects. No matter how many times a home changes hands, state law makes a builder liable for defects for a decade after construction.

On first appearance, California West is a beautiful development of clustered townhouses on boulder-strewn slopes above the San Fernando Valley. When it was built in 1988-90, the unit price ranged from $125,000 to $333,000, averaging $220,000.

Mintz bought in 1990, and says he began to notice defects soon after moving in--two Jacuzzis that didn’t work, delaminated doors, missing fire walls, ceiling leaks, plastic pipes of a kind illegal to use in household plumbing, malfunctioning locks. He and a neighbor showed me examples of all of these.

This is not a small lawsuit. The plaintiff’s lead lawyer, James Geffner, said he and two lawyers in other firms have taken the case on a contingency fee basis. Their tests done on the properties have cost nearly $600,000 and what is likely to be a protracted mediation will begin in October.

Geffner said Kaufman & Broad already has filed cross complaints against many subcontractors, and altogether, 30 lawyers are involved.

My goodness, I thought. It’s going to take a huge settlement to make this suit worthwhile.

The Kaufman & Broad general counsel, Pachino, insisted, “This lawsuit is unnecessary,” because he said the builder was ready to settle without one, and now, with all the legal fees, the homeowners might actually get less in the end.

He had gone to a 1998 homeowners meeting and recalled suggesting that homeowners provide a list of defects and not go to a lawyer.

Besides, Pachino said, Mintz complained about the Jacuzzis, which Kaufman & Broad paid $465 to repair, but other than that he had never made another claim in 10 years. Why not? he asked.

Geffner said Pachino must not recall that he had been representing the homeowners even before the meeting that Pachino attended. In fact, he requested the meeting.

“We’ve been talking with Kaufman & Broad since late 1997 or early 1998, and they’ve never made an offer to take care of any of these problems,” Geffner said.

When Pachino says the homeowners would do better without a lawsuit, “the best answer I can give is nonsense,” Geffner declared. “If we had not done the testing that we did, we would never have discovered many of the defects.”

And why had Mintz made only one claim?

Mintz explained, “I didn’t hear about the legal action until I went to a homeowners meeting. At that time, people were talking about their fire doors splitting, and I said, ‘That’s what’s happened to me. I thought mine was an anomaly . . .’

“Only when Geffner brought these things up did I realize I was vulnerable. There was no likelihood that my fire walls would hold back a fire. Geffner and the property manager said, ‘Don’t contact them on your own. Let [us] do it.’ ”

Pachino, meanwhile, had mentioned no other lawsuits. But checking Times clips, I found a Jan. 26 report of another defect suit against Kaufman & Broad, in the Antelope Valley, and soon learned of at least eight others.

I called the Kaufman & Broad PR director, Amy Friend, with considerable excitement. What is going on here? I asked.

Tuesday, Pachino answered yes, there have been defect suits brought in the California Marquis tract in Palmdale, by lawyer Lee Freeman, for 110 of the 390 homeowners. Recently, he said, the firm Anderson & Kriger brought another suit for 40 more owners. He confirmed all the suits I had found.

Pachino, saying that trial attorneys are pushing such cases, also told me that Susie Baumburger, an attorney with the Anderson & Kriger firm, has been advertising on two FM stations to Antelope Valley homeowners, soliciting clients.

He had tape-recorded the ads, and he read me a transcript: “Hi, I’m Susan Baumburger, managing attorney for Anderson & Kriger, the Antelope Valley’s best construction defect law firm, representing owners of homes built within the past 10 years. If you own an Inco, Kaufman & Broad, Brock, Rancho Vista or any other home with construction defect issues, Anderson & Kriger is the most experienced law firm to handle your needs . . .” (It ends with telephone numbers and the firm’s Web site).

I contacted Baumburger. “It sounds accurate,” she said. “The homeowners who call us wouldn’t call if they didn’t have problems. . . . We advertise because they don’t know if there’s anyone out there who can help them.”

Pachino referred me to Juan Acosta, attorney for the California Building Industry Assn., for an outline of what he believes the industry faces. Acosta told me that attorneys are pushing cases that used to be confined to L.A. out into the Inland Empire and the Central Valley.

“Litigation costs are enormous,” he said. “Fifteen or 20 lawyers sit around a room at the mediations, almost all on the defense side. For every dollar paid in a settlement to homeowners for repairs, the industry is paying $2 to $7 in defense costs, for lawyers and experts.”

But Geffner had another view. “Just because an attorney advertises doesn’t mean there’s no merit to the case,” he said. “These are defective houses. If they had built them properly to begin with, they wouldn’t have the lawsuits.”

*

Ken Reich can be contacted with your accounts of true consumer adventure at (213) 237-7060 or by e-mail at ken.reich@latimes.com.