Seats’ claim that homeowners always lose in arbitration is blatantly false, as any regular reader of this website knows. And fraudulent borrowing has far outstripped fraudulent lending.

She’s confusing multiple issues.

The moral is that if your contractor won’t give you a personal guarantee, you can take that as a sound warning that the reason you’re getting the price you’re getting is because you won’t have much chance of recourse if you’re dissatisfied later, even if you win in court. The LL in LLC stands for “limited liability” for a reason. It has nothing to do with the subject of this post, so we’re closing comments as Seats has gone way off topic and is being abusive.

Consumer Reports wrote in about 2004 that 15% of each new home built EVERY year has two or more SERIOUS defects. Granted that may only be about 150,000 + families EVERY year but those families suffer financial losses that are unimaginable if you haven’t experienced it. People don’t have money to rebuild a brand new house, they can’t sell it due to foreclosure laws for enough to pay off the mortgage — no one can even guess how many of the current foreclosures are due to substandard construction and lack of consumer protection on top of those foreclosures due to fraudulent lending. And by the way — many builders have their own mortgage companies that were intimately involved in predatory/fraudulent lending.

Not every spot of mold is toxic. NO ONE EVER SAID THAT IT WAS!!

Not every human is allergic/has reaction to even the most toxic of molds. NO ONE HAS CLAIMED THAT EVERY HUMAN WILL SUFFER THE HORRIBLE EFFECTS THAT SOME HAVE, BUT FOR THOSE WHO DO THERE MUST BE A REMEDY.

Not every home builder is a crook. NO ONE HAS EVER CLAIMED THIS. I DO WISH THOUGH THAT THE GOOD BUILDERS WOULD JOIN TOGETHER TO CLEAN UP THEIR INDUSTRY WHICH HAS BECOME INCREASINGLY CARELESS SINCE THE BUILDER LOBBY AND THEIR ATTORNEY’S HAVE BEGUN USING WORTHLESS TEN YEAR WARRANTIES WITH PREDISPUTE BINDING ARBITRATION CLAUSES AND THEIR RIGHT TO CHOOSE THE ARBITRATION SERVICE THAT IS BEHOLDEN TO THEM. BUILD CRAPPY HOUSES THAT CAN’T KEEP THE RAIN OUT AND THEN FORCE BUYERS INTO KANGAROO COURT. GOOD BUILDERS SHOULD BE JOINING IN THIS BATTLE TO REGAIN THEIR GOOD NAME. BUILDERS TODAY ARE RESPECTED AS MUCH AS SOME USED CAR SALESMEN.

Not every insurance company is dishonest in handling claims. I NEVER CLAIMED THAT THEY WERE, ALTHOUGH FOR THE LIFE OF ME I CAN’T THINK OF A SINGLE ONE THAT PAYS CLAIMS IN A TIMELY MANNER AND DOESN’T TRY TO PUSH THE VICTIM INTO AN UNJUST SETTLEMENT. IF YOU CAN NAME ONE I SURE WOULD LOVE TO KNOW BECAUSE I NEED GOOD INSURANCE. I ONCE ASKED THE INSURANCE COMMISSIONER OF MY STATE IF HE COULD THINK OF ANYTHING EVERYONE HAS TO HAVE BUT DOESN’T DARE USE BESIDES INSURANCE AND HE COULDN’T.

Not every attorney is a charlatan. I NEVER CLAIMED THIS EITHER — MAYBE YOU NEED TO READ MY POST AGAIN. THE ATTORNEY THAT I USED FOR MY HOUSE CASE WAS WONDERFUL. I WOULD RECOMMEND HIM TO ANYONE AND HAVE. MY BUILDERS ATTORNEY HOWEVER DID EVERYTHING IN THEIR POWER TO RUN UP MY COSTS WITH DELAY TACTICS, ETC. HOPING THAT I WOULD GO AWAY. I DIDN’T, BUT MANY HAVE NO CHOICE. THAT SHOULD BE UNETHICAL, BUT IT HAPPENS TO PLAINTIF’S ALL THE TIME, AND I IMAGINE THAT SOME POSTERS ON THIS BLOG ARE GUILTY AS CAN BE OF DOING JUST THAT. JUDGE’S NEVER SEEM TO SANCTION ACTIONS THAT SHOULD BE SANCTIONED. THE PROBLEM NOW IS THAT FEW HOMEOWNERS CAN EVEN GO TO CIVIL TRIAL ANYMORE DUE TO BINDING ARBITRATION CLAUSES WHERE HOMEOWNERS ALWAYS LOSE.

Then there are the builders with LLC’s — read this story that a home inspector sent me today. I happen to know one of the builders in this story – I used to live in Kansas City – and he is notorious for doing this — that’s why we tell everyone doing research on builders to search court house records which used to work better before so many started using binding arbitration so they could keep their dirty laundry from the public. http://www.nbcactionnews.com/content/cfa/story.aspx?content_id=e783cff9-88a7-49cb-9dd9-adca07aec0e4

I’m a very old senior citizen and I remember the day when business’s took pride in the work they did and would do nothing to harm their reputation. Today greed is the bottom line and it makes me very sad for my grown daughters and grandchildren, and YES — yours too because they will have to deal with this kind of greed in their lives unless people like Sharon Kramer and I can by some miracle get the powers that make law and regulations to listen to us even if all we have is truth and no money for their campaigns.

Clinical Infectious Diseases printed a study by Singh which says, “In the past decade, the frequency of opportunistic fungal infections as increased, and the spectrum of fungal pathogens has changed. The increasing number of susceptible hosts, the introduction of new modalities for hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, the evolution of organ transplantation practices, the use of novel immunosuppressive agents, and current antimicrobial prophylactic strategies have likely contributed to the changing epidemiology of invasive mycoses.”

Bumper, that means there’s a lot of mold and its accompanying toxicity out there AND it has MUTATED, so you can let go of the “ubiquitous argument.” These studies are both available in their entirety, free, from PubMed.

BTW, you may be interested to know that they are numbers 47 and 24, respectively, in the ACOEM position statement. How the authors could read those studies and come to the conclusion they did is unconscionable. READ THEM. I have. They don’t say what’s attributed to them.

As for greedy trial lawyers, I have no doubt the guys on the defense side of the aisle are living far more comfortably than MY lawyer, who lives in MY modest neighborhood and represents several clients who can’t pay. BLESS PLAINTIFFS ATTORNEYS. They are our only chance at a level playing field against the DEEP POCKETS of the building and insurance industries.

Not every spot of mold is toxic.
Not every human is allergic/has reaction to even the most toxic of molds.
Not every home builder is a crook.
Not every insurance company is dishonest in handling claims.
Not every attorney is a charlatan.

But in this wide world with billions and billions of people there are always a few who would qualify in each category. And yes mold predates biblical times. So what. If it were that toxic we would all be dead by now. Even today, if mold were that toxic the bodies of the citizens of New Orleans would still be piling up in the streets. But they are not, even though there are still plenty of people living in homes that have mold growing in, on and around them.

But I can tell what effect your beloved plaintiffs lawyers crusade for injustice has done. It has made it practically, if not totally, impossible to get insurance coverage for mold damage. Why, because before the onslaught of lawsuits an insurance company could gauge the number of incidents and expected payouts for such events from an historical perspective. But what cannot be gauged is the Powerball-like jury awards for events that may have no basis in reality and may even predate the policy inception date.

So after thirty years of having insurance coverage for mold damage, now I have none. Be sure to thank all of your trial lawyer friends for me.

What we are dealing with here is EXTENSIVE mold due to bad faith insurance and/or serious construction defects and defective products used in construction.

Synthetic stucco is a good example of a defective product that can allow water leaks into the walls of a home that the homeowner may not discover for as long as ten years. All that time mold is growing in the walls. One doctors family I worked with found mushrooms growing on the bedroom wall of their ten year old home — the first time they knew there was a problem. We have homeowners with brand new homes that have windows installed upside down and windows with no flashing that allow water into the wall cavity. These are molds that have grown and spread for a very long time, they are toxic and harmful to health. NO amount of bleach will fix this problem. Dry wall is the perfect food for mold.

This issue has NOTHING to do with a lazy homeowner but EVERYTHING to do with homebuilders that have insulated themselves from accountability which allows them to continue to build the slums of tomorrow today. Defense attorney’s who have helped these builders continue bad building practices are a huge part of the problem and I am sick and tired of hearing them talk about trial attorney’s and homeowners or any plaintiff wanting to hit the jack pot. What a joke. I don’t know a homeowner yet who has been a victim of this type of construction who has been made whole. Attorney’s don’t even want our cases because even if they win the builders have LLC’s they simply close down, don’t pay the award, and start a new LLC.

Insurance companies are notorious for denying claims or doing band aid fixes. If they honored their policies and did proper repair none of us would even be writing about the health effects of toxic mold.

Shame on defense attorney’s that help these criminals destroy families.

Someone mentioned what they did about mold in Leviticus — YES — read that one and it will tell you that even in biblical times they knew about the harmful effect of toxic mold.

That is not my description. It is taken directly for the new American Industrial Hygiene Associations’ publication: “Recognition, Evaluation and Control of Indoor Mold” addresses throughout the issue of the complexity and lack of singularity of mold exposure. Perhaps best summarized in Chapter 1, Section 1.3.5, page 13:

“Indoor exposures are a complex mixture of molds, bacteria, fragments of both types of ogranisms; their multiple toxic products; and biologically derived small particles, gases and other air pollutants. Effects, depending on the susceptibility of the exposed occupants and their degree of exposure, can be combinations of allergic response, inflammation and its consequences, and other toxic responses. This complex exposure and effect picture is not addressed by risk assessment focused on spores or individual toxins.”

But I do agree with you. It is pretty “icky”. Is that a scientific description?

Check out Leviticus 14:33-54 for how they took care of mold in dwellings in biblical days.