"An attorney for PJ’s Construction said the developers didn’t want to hire surveyors."
Well there's your problem.
The answer here should be simple... the developers pay for demolition, removal of the house, and restore the property back to the condition where they found it.
The lady that owns the property, the people who used to own it, a bank, an insurance company, I think a person that lives on another lot, the person who sold them the other lots.
In all likelihood the lawsuits are a stall until they can declare bankruptcy and start a new company.
But they can't just "restore" the property, it was full of mature native trees/plants and for bulldozed.
Also the reason they didn't "need" surveyors, was lots are clearly marked via numbers on telephone poles. They just read the numbers wrong. Which is even worse.
And leaves you enough time to close up shop, declare bankruptcy, and walk into court with Groucho glasses saying "your honor, clearly this suit is filed towards Romanes Eunt Domum. The company I run now is Romanes Eunt Domus."
It also says this was discovered when they sold the house. Hopefully that sale fell through with no clear title, but someone else may think it’s theirs
You don't understand tree law. A same tree of about the same size and age must be transported and planted where the old one was. It can cost well over $20,000 per tree. They don't get to just plant a sapling and say "20 years from now, you're all good".
Then it also has to survive the transplant and a fair amount don't, so must be replaced again if they fall over or die from the move.
The options are restore it (identical lot next door), or a fair market value, which would be the cost of the land plus repair, or a suitable replacement. She ignored two fair trades that have plenty of precedent in courts, to achieve more damages than she should be entitled too. She definitely seems like she’s trying to get her cake and eat it here too.
You aren’t entitled to the value of the house, that’s going above and beyond damages.
Yes. How dare her object to her property being irrevocably changed without her consent. How dare she not just roll over and accept a completely different property in exchange to make it easy on them.
No two properties are the same. You can't decide for another that your attempt at a compromise (that only benefits you) is sufficient.
Shit happens, she was given recourse and demanded far more than the damages she incurred.
How does swapping two properties benefit one? They need to pay for all the legal paperwork and everything, they aren’t coming out ahead, since the cost of the house would be the same on either property.
You seem to think the developer benefits here? Even though it’ll costs thousands of dollars in legal fees to process everything? And in the end all they have is a lot with a house, that they would have still had regardless? Where is the benefit to the developer?
And yes, when it comes track homes every property is more or less the exact same, that’s the entire point of them. Theres actually very few cases where lots have any significant difference to them, except for custom communities that are a rarity anywhere.
I do think they were careless but not malicious. There's no possible way to turn back the clock and put all the trees back in the lot, so she's going to have to settle for something besides what she started with.
Shit like this does not happen and when it does the person who fucked up needs to be taught the reason this is rare. In this case the developer needs to be held accountable, they won’t because they’ll file bankruptcy and open a new llc the following week though
I don't think the developer comes out ahead.. but I do think that the punishment on them should be punitive to the point of causing them to never do it again. Swapping out a fully treed lot (that the owner wanted) with a flat wasteland with a house on it could inequitable, depending on what you value. If they can give her one the same size as hers, fully wooded, that might matter.
It has all the original trees from her lot? It has the same gradient, adjacent gradients and stone? There's tons of differences between any two lands and equivalency would be up to the injured party -which they denied. Any judgement would be to make the injured whole or reach an agreement. Stamping your feet like the developer has any defensibility in their negligence is laughable.
You also can't look at this like a winning lottery ticket where you'll be flush with cash for the rest of your life because of it.
Taking this to trial could wind up with the woman only getting her $22k back and missing out on the other identical property or keeping her same property with a free $500k house on it. The developers royally fucked up here but it's not like they maliciously clear-cut her land and built a house on it which would be something that should come with a hefty penalty.
I think the court is just going to try to make her 'whole' which comes with the risk of missing out on a much better pre-trial settlement since her actual investment in the property was only $22k. This is not too different than you accidently getting into a fender bender at low speed and the other party suing you for millions of dollars due to 'pain and suffering.' The court isn't going to reward someone for being greedy.
Surveyors: Actually a really important job because without them nobody knows where the fuck anything actually is in any precise way, nor does anyone actually know they own the land they think they do.
Or just give the property the owner the house for free in exchange for not suing and cut their losses. Would probably be cheaper in the long run, especially counting legal fees.
The still vacant three-bedroom, two-bath house on a 1-acre lot in Puna’s Hawaiian Paradise Park is worth about $500,000. But it could cost a lot of people more than that as they head to court to sort it out.
Wow. A house is cheaper in Hawaii than it is in SoCal?
The housemate of my mother just sold her mother's house in Orange County. 2 bedroom and 1 bath, so smaller, for over $1 million.
