When is a $4 million verdict embarrassingly low? When it's a Construction Defect verdict where Plaintiffs' attorneys had been requesting $70 million. The Review-Journal reports:
What trial attorneys once billed as the largest construction-defect lawsuit in Nevada's history posted less-impressive results after a jury delivered its verdict Wednesday.
A $70 million case filed against Del Webb Communities in 2003 yielded just $4 million in damages, with a jury in Clark County District Court deciding that only 70 of nearly 1,000 homeowners named in the lawsuit merited compensation.
Ouch. Who was the big "losing" firm only garnering $4 mil for the Plaintiffs? That would be Los Angeles-based firm Wolf Rifkin Shapiro Schulman & Rabkin:
When Wolf Rifkin Shapiro Schulman & Rabkin filed the case five years ago, the lawsuit involved more than 1,400 homes in Sun City Summerlin. The plaintiffs alleged that Del Webb failed to install metal screeds that would protect homes from water damage, and that cracked stucco, mold and weakened walls resulted. Plaintiffs' attorneys said each home would require $50,000 in repairs; they also sought class action status involving all 7,800 homes in Sun City Summerlin, a move that could have led to damages of "several hundred million dollars," they said. But they didn't win class action status. So nearly 1,000 homeowners sued individually, and most of them received no damages.
Another L.A. firm goes down in flames in a Nevada court. Hmm . . . not to take away from the excellent CD defense work in this matter, but I'm thinking there may still be some home court advantage for Vegas attorneys.
Most of the CD firms in town are either satellite offices of SoCal firms or are run by former SoCal Cd attorneys. This is largely due to the fact that CD originate din SoCal and then migrated east.
ReplyDeletePoint is, SoCal-based firms were on both sides of this one. WRSS' far-lower-than-expected verdict isn't a result of them getting homeschooled in a Vegas court...
I hope they fixed their calendaring system in that office.
ReplyDeleteOne of their partners had an appeal dismissed in a water rights case because it was filed a day late and they also had to renotice and reschedule an HOA board meeting because they didn't give sufficient notice the first time.