Holding Homebuilders Liable for Personal Injury and Property Damage Caused by Defective Material: Chinese Drywall Case

Abstract

Faced with the stark reality that Chinese drywall manufacturers might not respond to American judgments, some homeowners affected by Chinese drywall excluded them from their lawsuits. Instead, these homeowners sought redress exclusively from homebuilders. This paper focuses on this unique approach of suing only the homebuilder that built the home with defective Chinese drywall and proposes that homeowners be given the opportunity to utilize the same legal theories available to other product consumers. This paper provides relevant background information on the subject matter and presents four common legal theories homeowners can use against homebuilders. The paper provides existing law for each legal theory and analogous case law involving other defective construction materials. Finally, in the conclusions section, the paper provides a discussion on why homeowners should sue homebuilders exclusively and how the courts should respond to the Chinese drywall problem.