Fw: Help Toxic Home Victims Spur Builder Responsibility

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Sent: Monday, April 29, 2002 6:24 PM

Subject: Help Toxic Home Victims Spur Builder Responsibility

Dear HADD Members,

We need your help to encourage national homebuilder Weekley Homes to

take responsibility for the financial, physical, and emotional devastation

their defective toxic new home has caused the family of Austin,

Texas.

This will only take a couple of minutes of your time, and it will send the

important message to Weekley that homeowners across the country are

going to support each other and demand justice for defective homes. Also,

by sending this note to family and friends and asking them to do the same,

it will help educate consumers to be cautious of companies who require

binding arbitration as a condition of doing business.

Here are the two ways you can personally help:

1) Please send an email note to Weekley Homes. The s have

set up a link on their web site to make this very easy. Go to

http://www.ToxicHomes.org/howtohelp.htm. If you don't have Internet access

or if the 's web site is down for any reason, a sample letter and

Weekley's email addresses are at the bottom of this note.

2) Please forward this to your family and friends and ask them to do the

same.

Below is some background so you can have a better idea why we have chosen to

help this family.

Sincerely,

Seats, President

Homeowners Against Deficient Dwellings (HADD)

http://www.hadd.com

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BACKGROUND

On Friday, March 8th, 2002 and Dawn and their two young

daughters filed a lawsuit against builder Weekley Homes over a brand

new toxic home, which was contaminated with dangerous levels of volatile

organic compounds (VOCs) and toxic mold. Like so many other trusting and

unsuspecting homeowners, the s had no idea that a stealth binding

arbitration provision in their building contract signed 20 months earlier

would prevent a jury and the public from ever hearing their story.

The s waited almost a year to move into what they were hoping was

going to be their dream home. Unfortunately, their brand new home came with

a leak that caused water to seep between their walls and under their

hardwood floors less than two days after they moved in. Their builder,

Weekley Homes, failed after numerous complaints to remove or dry any

of the wet building materials. Their negligence created the optimal

environment for the growth and spreading of toxic mold.

Because of serious declining health, the s had to evacuate their

home after only 5 weeks of living there. Extensive testing found high

levels of toxic mold in walls, in the hard wood floor, and in all 3

bathrooms where some sites were found to be caused by other construction

defects. Additional testing revealed dangerous levels of toxic petroleum

based solvents and other toxic volatile organic compounds in their home

being excreted by the building materials. Some of the chemicals found were

benzene, decane, heptane, formaldehyde, methylbenzene, octane, styrene, and

xylene. The house and virtually everything they own is contaminated and

ruined with toxic chemicals and/or toxic mold. Doctors and investigators

have told the s that because of the increased chemical and mold

sensitivities they developed while living in their home, the home can never

be cleaned to the point of being habitable. The home must be torn down and

rebuilt.

Dawn and her baby a both suffered neurological and brain

injury. a lost all her speech regressing to primitive grunting and

screaming. She couldn't even point with her finger, only with a clenched

fist and her knuckles. Her diagnosis: Encephalopathy and Environmental Toxic

Exposure. Their family pet cat died from illnesses caused by the exposure.

The head of the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine's

Laboratory for Environmental Sciences who examined and tested Dawn

for 6 hours told her that the brain and neurological damage that

was caused by her house is permanent and irreversible. Her diagnosis:

Chemical Encephalopathy due to molds, mycotoxins and indoor organic

compounds, autonomic dysfunction, and reactive airway disease due to molds

and mycotoxins. All this from 5 weeks in a Weekley home that they

claimed the air quality in it was as good as a hospital's!

The s tried to work with their uncooperative builder who denied

and tried to cover up the problem. The s lost trust in their

builder and had no other choice but to spend thousands of dollars of their

own money to secure detailed engineering inspections which they provided to

their builder. They even filed a notice letter under a state statute called

the Residential Construction Liability Act which requires the builder to

determine the nature, cause and extent of the defects. During the state

required inspection by the builder in response to the notice letter,

Weekley Homes did not take a single test for the chemical emissions and did

not take a single action to determine or document the other construction

defects responsible for the fungal overgrowth. Although Weekley made an

offer to purchase the 's house back, it was never a viable option

because it was contingent upon Dawn, and even the children releasing

Weekley for all other liability including damage to their health and

personal belongings. It would also have meant that the s would

have had to give up their dream of living on their land.

The s have been out of their home that they are still paying the

mortgage and utilities on since June 15th 2001. Since then, their family

has lived in a cramped apartment less than half of the size of their house

with all of them sleeping in a single bedroom. Their five year old daughter

a is having a difficult time emotionally because of her mother's

injuries and because she can't go home or ever have her toys and books, she

no longer has a yard to play in, and she will never see her cat again.

Unless Weekley Homes takes full responsibility for the damages they

have caused, the financial stress of having to maintain two sets of living

expenses and added medical expenses will soon cause the s to have

no choice but to default on their mortgage and lose their home, their

credit, and their 4 acres of land.

Just like almost every other homeowner, the s never consciously

chose binding arbitration as a means for resolving any and all disputes with

Weekley. They did not know that signing a construction contract with

Weekley meant that they forever gave up their constitutional rights to

a trial by jury for any and all future disputes with their builder.

Businesses who are unwilling to stand behind their products when something

goes wrong have figured out that unsuspecting binding arbitration clauses in

consumer contracts allow businesses to shield themselves from liability and

accountability in a court of law. To learn more about the dangers and

inequities that binding arbitration poses to consumers, please link to

http://www.arbitrationsucks.com.

In spite of the fact that Weekley Homes failed to fulfill their

obligations under the construction contract by building a residence that was

not fit for human habitation, Weekley filed a motion with the court to

invoke the arbitration clause in the contract and to compel the s

to arbitrate their complaints. The 's attorney, Mark of

Law Firm responded that the costs to the s would

be unreasonably excessive - well over $24,000 - while court costs in

County were only $150. The judge agreed that these excessive fees for

arbitration would effectively deny the s a forum to seek justice.

To save their sacred cow of arbitration, Weekley's attorney counter

responded that Weekley would front these arbitration costs to the American

Arbitration Association. Mark asked the judge why Weekley would be

willing to pay a total of almost $40,000 to arbitrate the dispute when there

was a perfectly fair and far less expensive forum in the courts? He then

attempted to lay out his argument that the arbitration provision was

procedurally unconscionable because the contract was a contract of adhesion,

but the judge would not allow him to. She reluctantly ordered the

s to arbitrate their dispute with Weekley with the American

Arbitration Association with Weekley paying the filing fees and arbitrators

salaries thus setting up an even further admitted bias against the

s. After the judge issued the order, she then disclosed to the

attorneys that at first she felt that she might have to recuse herself since

she herself was also an arbitrator for the American Arbitration Association,

but that ultimately she was okay with it and the order stands.

The 's future will now be determined by arbitrators with ties to

the construction industry, and whose association - the American Arbitration

Association (AAA) - is interested in performing for Weekley to maintain

exclusive business from Weekley because Weekley currently

contractually requires that AAA perform all Weekley's arbitrations. The

ultimate ruling will be final and binding with no effective way for the

s to challenge or appeal it. Consumer groups in Texas have not

been able to find one single example of homeowners prevailing in binding

arbitration.

It is very unfortunate that the s are not alone. There are other

families suffering from Weekley and many other builders who are

employing sloppy building techniques predisposing homes to toxic mold and

using building materials that emit toxic chemicals. They are using binding

arbitration provisions to shield themselves from being held accountable in a

court of law and to keep their skeletons in the closet away from public

scrutiny. Binding arbitration rulings and proceedings are protected as

confidential. There is no public record.

Weekley Homes builds in Austin, Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston, and San

. They also build in the following cities: Atlanta, ton,

Charlotte, Denver, ville, Nashville, Orlando, Raleigh, Tampa, and

Tulsa. As the second largest, privately-owned home builder in America, they

should be willing to pay for all the damage they have caused and they should

be ashamed of themselves.

Isn't it ironic that Weekley's corporate headquarters sits less than a

dozen miles from Enron in Houston Texas? Hopefully if enough people are

bothered by this all too common example of corporate greed at the consumer's

expense and are willing to take just a few minutes to send Weekley

Homes an email note expressing to them their disappointment, that they will

realize that even though they are virtually guaranteed to win in

arbitration, they will ultimately lose in the court of public opinion unless

they do the right thing. Stay tuned to the 's web site at

http://www.toxichomes.org/status.htm to monitor their situation.

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SAMPLE EMAIL LETTER (feel free to customize)

Dear Weekley Homes,

I am writing to express my disappointment with how your company has handled

the personal injuries, property damage, and heartache your defective new

home has caused the family in Austin, Texas.

It is very concerning to see a builder mess up a house and hurt a family so

much and yet work so hard to evade full responsibility.

I would also like to thank you for the valuable consumer lesson in how some

businesses abuse binding arbitration to shield themselves from liability in

a court of law when they hurt someone. This will help me as a consumer to

protect my constitutional rights in the future as I decide to which

companies I give my business.

I will be forwarding my concerns to my family and friends and asking them to

do the same. We will all be monitoring the family's situation and

I hope to hear very soon that you stepped up to the plate and did the right

thing.

Sincerely,

YOUR NAME

YOUR CITY, YOUR STATE

SEND LETTERS TO:

_Weekley@... (President)

Mike_Humphrey@... (VP)

DWH@... (Corporate email)

Pat_Harkins@... (Quality Coach)

News@... (Comments)