Homeowners can sue builders over defects
Iowans who find defects in their homes can sue contractors for work-related damages years after the fact, even if they bought the house from previous owners, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled today. The court’s 6-0 decision reverses two lower-court rulings against a Clive couple, Mike and Bev Speight, who had tried to sue Walters Development Co. for water damage to their home. In 2005, the couple discovered that they could stick their fingers into the siding of their house, and found water spilling into their basement caused by faulty shingles and rain gutters. “We believe that Iowa law should follow the modern trend allowing a subsequent purchaser to recover against a builder for a breach of the implied warranty of workmanlike construction,” Justice Jerry Larson wrote in the 14-page ruling. Read Decision...

Homeowners can sue builders over defects

BY GRANT SCHULTE • and MELISSA WALKER • REGISTER STAFF WRITERS • February 1, 2008

Iowans who find defects in their homes can sue contractors for work-related damages years after the fact, even if they bought the house from previous owners, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled today.

The court’s 6-0 decision reverses two lower-court rulings against a Clive couple, Mike and Bev Speight, who had tried to sue Walters Development Co. for water damage to their home. In 2005, the couple discovered that they could stick their fingers into the siding of their house, and found water spilling into their basement caused by faulty shingles and rain gutters.

“We believe that Iowa law should follow the modern trend allowing a subsequent purchaser to recover against a builder for a breach of the implied warranty of workmanlike construction,” Justice Jerry Larson wrote in the 14-page ruling.

The court extended those “implied warranty” rights to the Speights and sent the case back to district court. Not allowing second- or third-time owners to file claims of shoddy construction “would do an injustice to those who purchase a home from a previous buyer shortly after the home was constructed,” the ruling said.

The Speights’ attorney, Harley Erbe, called the ruling “a great victory for consumers, because the fact that many people nowadays are buying homes that were built for somebody else, as opposed to having homes that were custom-built.”

Until today’s court decision, he said, people like the Spreights would have been “shut out if the home had any potential construction issues.”