While sheets of drywall were being delivered to a Coconut Grove home under construction in 2006, the company supplying the wallboard was in talks with the Chinese manufacturer, questioning a potent smell some builders said was emanating from the product.
As the days ticked by, Miami-based Banner Supply got answers from Knauf Plasterboard Tianjin. Don’t sell the stuff, KPT said. And tell your customers not to install it.
That was four days before the drywall was hung in that Coconut Grove home, which Lisa and Armin Seifart would eventually buy.
It was plenty of time, their attorney told a Miami jury Tuesday, for Banner to stop the installation. But the 53-year-old family-run company didn’t. And the drywall ended up being hung in the home on Bonita Avenue.
A few weeks later, Banner signed a confidential agreement with KPT to trade their remaining supply of Chinese drywall with domestic board and keep reports of the smell to themselves. More than a year would go by before the Seifarts would sign a contract to buy their dream home.
Their case, the first jury trial in the country over defective drywall made in China, is one of thousands filed against every member of the chain of drywall supply and installation. Government testing has found the drywall is the cause of corrosion in copper pipes and tubing, including air condition coils, and that it can ruin wiring and appliances. About 3,300 complaints from homeowners have been reported to the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Banner “had the knowledge. They had the power. Instead they used it to protect themselves,” said Ervin Gonzalez, the Seifarts’ attorney, during opening statements Tuesday. He used a brief animated video to show how the hydrogen sulfide – colorless in reality but portrayed as a neon green scourge – slowly ate away at the home.
About a year after the Seifarts moved in, the gas seeping out of the Chinese drywall installed in their home corroded the air conditioner coils, parts of the refrigerator, wires, even the master bathroom shower heads, and made the house smell.
Whether a jury finds that a Miami drywall supplier’s actions were a cover up, as Gonzalez asserts, or actually the work of a conscientious company, the Seifarts won’t leave court empty-handed.
Banner concedes that the drywall it obtained from manufacturer Knauf Plasterboard Tianjin is defective and the source of the corrosion in the Seifart home, which they bought in early 2008. But they are unwilling to pay more than the roughly $705,000 it is costing the family to repair their $1.6 million home, live elsewhere during the repairs and replace belongings damaged by the hydrogen sulfide fumes seeping from the drywall.
Banner attorney Peter Spillis said the company’s actions – including having the drywall tested after it first arrived to make sure it met U.S. specifications and turning to the manufacturer when they got complaints about a smell, then signing an agreement that gave away their own right to sue KPT – demonstrate how a responsible company behaves.
“Who in their right mind would sign away their rights to go after the person responsible for the problem if they thought ... there was a problem?” Spillis said.
“It’s not about covering up. The evidence is going to show you ... the folks with Banner said ‘Thank goodness. It’s not the massive problem we thought it was going to be.’”
The first witness to take the stand was Banner controller Scott Giering, who had said during a deposition that some people might actually like the smell caused by drywall in some homes – that of rotten eggs or flatulence.
“I truly regret that statement that some people like that smell or enjoy that smell,” Giering said. “I would prefer not to live in a house that smells like rotten eggs.”
Source: The Miami Herald. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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