Is 20% difference really that much of a deal that he'd risk it at trial? What an idiot. :rofl:

 

:werd:

Good job though :goodjob:.

 

+1 need some of that one of these days

good job

 

congrats jay!

 

He probably figured he could get them for even more money if it went to a jury trial.

Bad decision on his part.

 

Well his major issue is that he was seeking a fraud claim and if he recovered, would be granted attorney's fees aka money that he is charging himself and possible punitive damages.

But I wrote a brief in a hearing before the trial and based on my brief, the judge granted a our party's motion to exclude any cause of action except for negligence which we obviously defeated. It was a good thing.

I guess greed blinds people.

Rick, it was a single owner in a 23 unit condo conversion. His main issue was that he was trying to recover for damage in the common areas (walls roof plumbing etc.) Of course the judge shot him down, but not after we argued for days about it.

I am working on another Constr. Defect case in Vegas that involves a developer of some of the biggest planned communities there. It's an ENORMOUS case and I don't see it going away for a couple of years. There are MILLIONS riding on that one and that's just the settlement effort. We'll see what the case develops into.

 

IC I was curious because my friends dad developed ~2000 units in the San Diego area

 

So was the construction not defective? Or not your client's fault? Or could he not prove defect?

 

And down goes another indeed. And up goes your bank account and additions to the mdx!

 

No there was no evidence of negligence and frankly, the plaintiff's main contention was that when he went to remodel his bathtub, they opened the wall (which is also an exterior wall) and found termite damage.

Uhh yeah.

1. They had a termite inspection prepurchase and in the disclosures it states that there are termites and we tented the entire building, but we didn't open up any walls.

2. The building was built in 1965 so it was 40 years old when the guy bought it.. DUHHH there are going to be termites


3. The disclosure clearly state that the remodel did NOT include any structural work aka replacing timbers.

4. He only found 4 bad studs in 3 walls of the bathroom

5. This is a "luxury" condo conversion located in Ocean beach, San Diego. It is litierally 1 block from the ocean. Yes. The likeliness that termites will be present in a 40 year old building one block from the ocean is pretty high.. Like 100% likely.



The bottom line is the guy bought the unit in 05 when everything was stupid high and now wanted to get ALL of his money (mortgage, hoa dues, property taxes and escrows) AND keep the property and get his "attorney's fees".

At one point he claimed that because of the termite disclosure, his unit would only be worth 150k. I personally offered him 175k at lunch and he laughed. I was dead serious.