Water trucks douse Pulte protesters in YouTube video
The Arizona AFL-CIO on Thursday said the organization has in its possession more than half an hour of video footage it claims shows a Pulte Homes water truck spraying paid picketers with high-pressure hoses...Petroulakis said the people shown in the video were paid by the union to picket at the worksite and added that picketers were warned that trucks would be spraying in the area, which is shown at the beginning of the video... But Kennedy said that the only editing done was to compress half an hour of footage from an incident into a two-minute Internet video. She added that her organization was aware of at least 15 other similar incidents.  Related article

Lenexa Woman Protests Pult Homes
A Lenexa homeowner claims Pulte Homes has built faulty homes and wants the builder to buy back her house.  Neighbors said her portest is driving down prices in the area.  KMBC's Jim Flink reports

Dark side of the housing boom: Shoddy construction
Less than a year after moving into her new 2,100-square-foot house in Lenexa, Kans., Susan Sabin has strung up lemon lights in her front window. The lemons, she says, go perfectly with the home's most prominent features: jammed doors, warped windows, bent pipes and cracked walls. "The house is essentially splitting in two," says Sabin. At the peak of the recent housing boom, home buyers scooped up a million newly built homes every year while homeowners poured more than $200 billion into renovations. But now stories of shifting soil, leaky roofs, damaged stucco and other construction defects abound.

A dozen rulings in the last year have been a boon to corporations by making it harder to sue them or limiting lawsuit damages
The Bush administration and corporate lobbyists long have sought sweeping "tort reform" to limit lawsuits and massive jury awards "€” without much success. But in the last year, they quietly have been winning much of what they've wanted on a case-by-case basis in the Supreme Court.  With a week to go in their term, the justices have handed down a dozen rulings that sharply limit the damages that can be won in lawsuits or make it harder to sue corporations.

Defective homes pose growing problem, but help is out there
You've bought a dream home - or so you thought. Now the foundation is cracking, the basement has flooded and the roof sags. Not so dreamy anymore. County residents who have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the biggest investment of their lives are sometimes left with a defective version of the American dream... County homeowners are experiencing a "national problem," said Janet Ahmad, president of the San Antonio-based Homeowners for Better Building. Binding arbitration issues and legislation passed to protect builders from legal retribution have made it hard for buyers to fight back, she said."It has affected the lack of quality homes and virtually made warranties absolutely worthless," she said.

Ban Binding Mandatory Arbitration
Binding Mandatory Arbitration stacks the deck against average Americans trying to hold powerful interests accountable when they have been hurt through no fault of their own.  Even worse, it forces consumers to give up their rights before a dispute even occurs. Visit: Give Me Back My Rights Campaign & People Over Profits Grassroots Action Center and Send a message urging your Congressman to support all legislation banning Binding Arbitration 

Homeowners protest Richland County subdivision building company
Catalano lives in Deer Lake, a relatively new subdivision near Percival and Clemson Roads. He and at least a dozen homeowners say the builder, D.R. Horton, promised them landscaping and access to a nearby lake, but failed to deliver. Catalano says, "With all the rock and clay and no dirt whatsoever for the grass to take, it just dies right out." The homeowners say their yards are covered with dead sod and have major drainage problems. Some have sprinklers, and nothing but weeds to sprinkle.

News Flash! Big Republican Political Campaign Donor Bob Perry gives $20,000 to Houston City Council Candidate Democrat Melissa Noriega

Bob Perry gives $1,000 to $5,000 to Senatorial & Congressional canditates however,"Noriega raised more than $109,000 in the past month "€” $20,000 of it from Houston homebuilder Bob Perry and his family." See: Related 2000 - 2008 Perry contribution information.

A Fannin County Trial
With three days left before last Christmas, the Fannin County jury of one man and five women found Bob and Pat Egert of Ben Franklin guilty of Harassment. In 2005, the Egerts had made a series of telephone calls to Bobby Fines and Vickie Leggett of Ivanhoe in accordance with the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, and Leggett filed a complaint to the Fannin County Sheriff's Office. "When I went to see Fannin County District Attorney Richard Glaser after receiving notice of a charge against me," Pat said, "he pulled out his desk drawers, put his feet up on them, and told me that I would not be able to tell my side of the story in court." The jury never knew this. Glaser's motion, once accepted by the district court judge, effectively denied the Egerts from telling much of their side of the story, just as Glaser allegedly said would happen. The jury would never know that they had heard only part of the story. Read 3/18/07 Part One: Homeowner convicted for reporting Builder to TRCC & the Better Business Bureau releated story...
Read the latest account of the incredible trial...

Homeowners seek help from Live Oak
Dissatisfied buyers who want their home builder to buy their houses back asked the Live Oak City Council for help Tuesday.  Some homes in the 2-year-old Bridlewood Park subdivision have dramatic wall cracks, doors that won't close and flooding in the garages and yards. A few residents have started a Web site, www.RylandTrouble.com, to publicize the problems, placing the blame on California-based builder Ryland Homes. See KENS 5 Report    Plus:  View Photos

The Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law
"Mandatory Binding Arbitration Agreements: Are They Fair For Consumers?
Foreclosure rates are in the news almost every day, but bad builders and arbitration clauses don't make the news. The majority of us have no voice. We are threatened with arbitration, and most are confused and afraid. Some homeowners patch up their new houses and dump them on the next unsuspecting buyer. Some houses in my neighborhood have had as many as five owners. Previous owners are being sued by new owners. We can sue each other for non-disclosure, but the builders are above the law.

Homeowners wage battle with builder
Come to the homes of Cynthia Daugherty and Susan Sabin and you'll notice the lemons. But the Christmas-like display is meant to make a not-so-joyous point "€” both women believe their recently built homes are lemons. Since Daugherty and Sabin bought their homes last year, they say, the foundation walls and floors have begun to crack in several locations. Both homeowners maintain they were sold defective houses and are calling for the developer to buy them back. And they are taking extraordinary measures to force the issue. "Pulte Homes should not be allowed to build any more homes in this city until they buy back my worthless piece of junk," Daugherty told the council.

Some Live Oak residents say their new homes are falling apart
Homeowners in a Live Oak subdivision are hopping mad over troubles with new homes, and they said the homebuilder is to blame. Bridlewood Park homeowners living at the top of a hill say their homes are falling apart, while those living at the bottom said they're going to be flooded, and a few of them say they just want out. "It's literally falling on our head," homeowner Ron Jech said, pointing to his ceiling. To hear Jech tell it and show it, his home, built about 18 months ago by Ryland Homes, is just splitting apart.  View: photos

Disgruntled Ryland homeowner turns Internet into soapbox
Unhappy that his year-and-a-half-old home has wall cracks wide enough to stick a hand through, Ronald Jech recently took an unconventional path in the hopes of getting his home repaired. Jech aired his compliant online with a website, www.RylandTroubleToo.com, which features dozens of photos of his house, along with an inspection report. The site has gotten more than 10,000 hits in the few weeks since it went live.  And Jech and a handful of other neighbors, who are also having problems with homes in the Bridlewood Park subdivision in Live Oak, for four weekends have been staging a protest of sorts, picketing from their beds of their pickup trucks. At the height of the traditional summer home selling season, they've parked near the builder's model homes in Bridlewood Park and offering house hunters a tour of Jech's home, where the walls are cracking, doors are sticking and some of the kitchen sheetrock fell on his wife Dina one night while she was cooking. View: photos

Some Live Oak residents say their new homes are falling apart
Homeowners in a Live Oak subdivision are hopping mad over troubles with new homes, and they said the homebuilder is to blame. Bridlewood Park homeowners living at the top of a hill say their homes are falling apart, while those living at the bottom said they're going to be flooded, and a few of them say they just want out. "It's literally falling on our head," homeowner Ron Jech said, pointing to his ceiling. See Ryland TroubleToo.com plus protest photos.