Your West Valley News: Suncitygrand | March 24, 2015
Gov. Doug Ducey has signed a bill making it more difficult for homeowners to sue over construction defects in their homes.
The bill by Darin Mitchell of Litchfield Park repeals a law allowing homeowners to recover attorney and expert fees when suing a homebuilder for construction defects.
Mitchell says the bill protects homeowners from paying for construction problems while protecting builders from excessive and expensive litigation.
But a Phoenix-based attorney who specializes in construction-defect cases said the math doesn’t add up for homeowners.
“This revision will effectively bar the doors to the courthouse for homeowners with legitimate defects,” said Stephen Weber of the Kasdan Simonds Weber & Vaughan law firm.
In February, an Arizona appeals court upheld a more than $13 million judgment for a construction-defects case Weber won against developer Del Webb Communities Inc. on behalf of 460 homeowners in Sun City Grand who had cracks in their ceilings, walls and floors. An arbitration panel awarded the homeowners about $7.5 million in damages and about $6 million in expert, attorney and arbitration fees, Weber said.
Without the extra award money, the 460 homeowners would have had about $1.5 million to split among them to pay for the construction defects, he said. “The big point is without the ability to recover attorney fees, expert fees and court fees, homeowners are never going to be made whole,” Weber said.
House Bill 2578 also establishes a homebuilder’s right to repair construction defects before a homeowner can sue.
Kevin O’Malley, an attorney from the Gallagher & Kennedy law firm representing the Home Builders Association of Central Arizona, said the right to repair would allow builders to come out and fix the problem without having to litigate.
Right now, homeowners have to write a notice to the homebuilders detailing the problems at least 90 days before filing a lawsuit against them. The homebuilder can choose to inspect the house, fix the problem, offer to compensate the owners for the value of the defect or go to court.
O’Malley said current law has created an “avalanche of construction-defect litigation,” and Mitchell’s bill fixes that. “Instead of creating an incentive to settle it created an incentive to litigate, and we want to unwind that,” O’Malley said.
The Senate approved the proposal on a 24-5 vote on Wednesday. Ducey signed the bill on Monday.