Jury Duty Finally Over

Air Force Academy, miscellaneous | UltraRob | Sunday, October 15th, 2006 at 11:15 am

Friday afternoon we finally finished the court case that I was on the jury for. A day of sitting in court was more exhausting than a day on the bike when I’m fit. The weather has been great with highs in the 70’s some days and I’ve been stuck inside. Because the case was so long, we were only given 50 minutes for lunch most days and often only a 10 minute break morning and afternoon.

Last Monday was a court holiday so I was out but that was the day that the temperature hung around 40 degrees and it was drizzling most of the day. I went in to work and my coworker had the courage to tell me how great it had been riding in the Air Force Academy. There’s a lot of good riding at the AFA but after 9/11 the AFA was closed to visitors except the short distance from the north gate to the Visitor Center. According to an article in The Gazette, the number of visitors had dropped from 1.4 million a year to 250,000. This had hurt the athletic programs because much of their funding comes from sales of souvenirs at the Visitor Center. They were also worried about recruitment because a lot of their recruits report visiting the AFA and then wanting to go there. In any case having it open again is great news for cyclists and hikers.

So what did I have to listen to for 2 weeks in court? A couple had a house built for them in 2003. The house had a basement dug into the sandstone and claystone that was only 2 feet below the surface. As soon as they moved in, they started finishing the basement. While they were finishing the basement, they noticed a lot of condensation on the windows but never called the home builder. In February of 2004 which as a little over 2 months after they moved in, they pulled back insulation up by the rim joist to drill a hole for an air conditioning line and found mold.

The home builder came in and was concerned there was a ground water problem because of the amount of moisture. They brought in a several experts to look at what was going on. The basement was sealed off and the mold removed. Once the mold was gone, they used dehumidifiers to dry out the basement. There was a perimeter drain around the foundation and also another drain 6 feet down connected to a sump pit with a pump. The home builder had a company come in and run a camera through the drains to check for clogs and nothing was found. There was nothing really to indicate that there was too much water around the house. The basement stayed fine during the summer but some moisture reappeared after it got cold in the fall. None of the experts could really identify why the basement was damp so the home builder offered to install a whole basement humidifier. This was unacceptable to the home owners because they had gotten it in their heads that there was ground water around the house.

In my opinion the home owners were unreasonable from the beginning and had attorneys and their own experts involved. The home builder went to great lengths to fix things. Based on one experts findings, some changes were made to the ducting to increase air circulation in the house and a trench was dug about 20 feet behind the house and another drain was put in to catch water running off the hill behind the house. It turned out that the humidity was running around 45 – 60% which seems a bit high for here but not terrible.

We listened to hydrolygists with PhDs, geohydrolygists, geotechnical engineers, environmental hygenists, medical doctors, and other experts. They talked a lot of theory but never proved why the basement was getting damp. One of the claims was that the people’s kids had been really sick because of the mold but none of us were convinced that it wasn’t other allergies. The people had their kids tested for mold allergies but not for any other allergies. It appeared they wanted to blame mold instead of figuring out what else could be causing the allergy systems. On 2 occasions after the basement was dried out, the air in the house has tested for mold and it had less than outside.

So what did the jury decide? For the most part, we were all young because they seemed to want people on the jury that had kids. We actually were inclined to give them nothing but a couple older people on the jury felt they deserved something. The home owners had brought in an expert that claimed it would cost $282,000 to put in additional drains under the basement slab and do other unnecessary things to the house. They also claimed another $103,000 in medical expenses, loss of use, reduced value of the house, etc. So that comes to $385,000 of real damages and their lawyer also suggested that they be awarded a similar amount for all of the mental anguish and inconvenience. We felt that they caused most of their own mental anguish.

We ended up awarding them $46,625 based on what we thought was reasonable for additional deep drainage, some stucco damage that seems unrelated and the fact they will have to disclose the mold when they sale the house and may have to reduce the house price. I think even that was a bit high but we spent over 5 hours deliberating and that’s the least some were willing to go. We did make them 10% responsible since they didn’t report the moisture in the basement before mold grew. That means that 10% will be deducted from the $46,625. They want to get out of house as soon as possible because they have bad memories in it.

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