The Courier-Journal Newspaper
(Louisville, KY) - Amy Judkins' house on South Shelby Street is plagued with problems: cracking wallboard, doors that won't stay closed, holes in the yard, a buckling sidewalk, sloping floors, rotting door jambs, improper drainage and a sinking foundation.
No, Judkins' home isn't old. She bought it new for about $60,000 in 1994, when it was featured in the Home Builders Association of Louisville's Smoketown Homearama, designed to revitalize the urban area.
"I thought I would be worryfree" with a new house, said Judkins, 51, who works at General Electric. Instead, she's had "trouble from day one," said her son, Lorenzo Judkins, who lived there for a few years after his mother moved in. In 1999, after what he described as "five years of anguish," his mother sued the builder and warranty company.
As of last week, the suit had not been resolved, and Judkins said she's a bit afraid to continue living there.
The legal case has revolved around whether the court should decide the dispute or if Judkins' claims should go to warranty arbitration. The defendants are Allstate Builders Inc., 630 Bruce Ave., and Quality Builders Warranty Corp. of Wormleysburg, Pa. Both agree that the house has problems and say procedures are being followed to resolve the situation.
City officials are concerned because the city promoted the Homearama, and the Louisville-Jefferson County Land Bank sold the lot to the builder for $1.
"We pushed it because we want people to move back to the city, and 'infill' housing is good," said Rebecca Fleischaker, a spokeswoman for the mayor's office. She said the city would only be responsible for any problems in the public right of way or with public utilities.
The house, at 766 S. Shelby, passed a city building inspection before Judkins moved in, said Bill Schreck, head of the city's Department of Inspections, Permits and Licenses.
Bob Kirchdorfer, the city's chief building inspector, visited the property recently and acknowledged the problems but did not determine the specific cause, Schreck said.
Next door, at 768 S. Shelby, homeowner Sheniquia Bowman, 29, also has a large hole next to her house. The city plans to repair that because it extends under the sidewalk and could be a safety hazard, Fleischaker said.
The Metropolitan Sewer District conducted a dye test last week at Bowman's house to see if the sewer system was leaking, but found no problem, said MSD spokesman Bud Schardein. Among the causes for such a hole could be a natural crevice in the ground or a "poorly back-filled construction site," he said.
Engineers hired separately by the builder and Judkins say that her house is settling and that there may be problems with fill material underneath. The city razed a structure at the site of Bowman's and Judkins' houses about 20 years ago and filled the basement with materials from the building before covering it with soil - which is standard procedure, Fleischaker said.
Allstate President Ray Haines said Judkins' house met building codes and the problems are not his fault. ``It definitely needs to be taken care of,'' he said. "It probably would have to do with conditions . . . in the ground. If somebody sells me a lot, I expect it's ready to build on."
Haines said he checked the lot about four years ago and that it had not settled as much as it has now. "Water would lead to this damage over time," he said.
The builder is responsible for making sure a lot is suitable for building, Schreck said.
"We sell the land as is," Fleischaker said.
Jefferson Circuit Court dismissed Judkins' suit, which asked for unspecified damages, on July 7, 1999, saying it should go to arbitration, as the warranty requires. The Kentucky Court of Appeals affirmed the lower court's ruling Feb. 2.
Kevin Eddins, Judkins' attorney, said last week that he was deciding whether to appeal to the Kentucky Supreme Court or go to arbitration. "It's a mess," Eddins said earlier of the situation, and the house itself "needs to be fixed."
Quality Builders had to submit Judkins' warranty claims to arbitration because they were disputed by Allstate, said John A. Gill, Quality Builders' general counsel.
Judkins said she sued because Quality Builders would not process her claims and Allstate would not fix her house. Problems with the house appeared within the first year, Amy Judkins said. After getting only cosmetic help from Allstate, she said, she took out a second mortgage to help pay for repairs.
Allstate's Haines contends that the house was built with a curved piece at the base of a downspout and had a splash block for proper drainage. Those were missing a year before the suit was filed, he said, contributing to the problems. But the Judkinses, who have since extended the downspout to direct water away from the house, say the pieces were never there. But even so, such major problems could not have been caused by the missing pieces, they contend.
Amy Judkins said a repairman told her in 1998 that the water from the downstairs bathtub had been running into the ground. She said she told Kirchdorfer about the drain pipe, and he had gotten a city inspector to work with a plumber to get it fixed.
"It was either loose or not connected," Kirchdorfer said recently, but he didn't know how long the problem had existed or the cause.
Reports in the court record from William Cassidy, an engineer Judkins hired in 1998 to inspect the house, and T. Rangaswamy, an engineer Allstate hired to inspect it, both note major structural and drainage problems at the house.
Both reports say the downspout needed to be directed away from the foundation, but they also suggest that there may be problems with fill material below the house. The builder's engineer also said that standing water on a vacant lot next door may be a factor and that someone should check to see if there's an abandoned storm sewer under the house.
Cassidy said the "first floor has a pronounced side-to-side sag." He recommended that the foundation be underpinned to arrest the settlement and that the sagging first-floor joists be shored up.
Rangaswamy's report said, among other things, that nails had popped out of the wallboard, and "drainage around the residence is improper and inadequate. Water percolating in the ground does damage to the foundation,'' causing ``severe settlement."
Bowman's house is another of the three houses Haines said Allstate built for the Homearama. In addition to the sinkhole MSD investigated, Bowman has cracks in interior walls. The first crack was in a bedroom. "It got worse, like a puzzle," she said.
The Shelby Park Neighborhood Association wrote to the state attorney general's office about a year ago, seeking help for both women, but the office had no record of it, spokesman Corey Bellamy said.
After recently getting a new copy, the Louisville office of the attorney general's Consumer Protection Division said it will review both situations and could decide to mediate in Bowman's case and investigate Judkins' case under the state's 1972 Consumer Protection Act, said Harold Turner, assistant attorney general.
The office has had three other complaints about Allstate since 1998, Bellamy said. Two were resolved and one resulted in a lawsuit.
Allstate's Haines said the company has probably built a thousand houses.
"Everything else was fine" about the Smoketown Homearama, said Ella Roberts, the Shelby Park association's president. "It helps build the neighborhood up and has increased homeownership."
Caption: A sinking foundation is just one of many problems at the South Shelby Street home Amy Judkins bought new seven years ago.
Caption: PHOTOS BY DURELL HALL JR., THE COURIER-JOURNAL Judkins, right, isn't alone in her problems. Her next-door neighbor, Sheniquia Bowman, stood in a large hole next to her house. That structure also has cracks in the interior walls. Both houses may have been built on land that wasn't properly back-filled, an official said.
Caption: A sinking side-door landing at Bowman's home has given a tilt to the entrance deck.
Caption: BY DURELL HALL JR., THE COURIER-JOURNAL Both Amy Judkins, right, and her next-door neighbor, Sheniquia Bowman, have homes with structural damage.
Martha Elson
Staff Writer
The Courier-Journal
Phone: 502-582-7061
FAX: 502-582-7080
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