Crooked House tells the story about our ordeal with a house we designed and built in the upscale Cleveland suburb of Moreland Hills, in the late 1980s. (In the book we call the suburb Emerald Heights.) The house, custom- designed and built, was defective from top to bottom, but we didn't learn of this until after we moved in, in June 1986. From the beginning the responsible people refused to fix the house, despite all of our entreaties and those of our attorney. Having no reasonable alternative, we filed suit and took them to court; the result was the largest residential construction case ever tried in Ohio. We moved out of the house in 1989 and published Crooked House in 1991.
Crumbling Dreams, published in 1993, is sort of a sequel. In Crooked House we included a short section at the end titled "How to Protect Yourself And Avoid a Legal Nightmare When Building or Buying or Building a New Home." We were able to expand on this section by virtue of all the feedback we got after the book's publication, plus some nittry gritty research. People from all over the country contacted us with their own unique horror stories, or sent us news clippings about their case. We also researched the subject in various indexes (this was before the world wide web) and came up with a plethora of articles from all over the country. Lastly, we got into contact with some grassroots homebuyer organizations, which provided much useful information. We condensed all this information into Crumbling Dreams.
We start off Crumbling Dreams with a synopsis of the Crooked House story; in that way readers can get the flavor of our experience, without reading the entire Crooked House book. Next, we quote reports of similar experiences with new house construction from all over the country. We quote personal and news accounts of many people who had the misfortune to buy a home built by dishonest and/or irresponsible people. Lastly, Crumbling Dreams gives specific advice about how to avoid a nightmare when building or buying a new house (or condo).
My husband and I lost a fortune on our new "dream" home, despite winning a technical legal victory. Short of sickness, injury or death, it is the worst experience any consumer could ever have. We were so devastated by the legal battle and unfair court verdict (and we proved breach of contract) that we felt compelled to write about it; the result was Crooked House. Writing is a catharsis that many victims of injustice resort to. After Crooked House came out, we heard from people all over the country with similar new-house experiences. There was a pattern to these experiences, and we felt compelled to warn others of this pattern and at the same time offer advice on how to avoid getting burned on a new-house purchase; the result was Crumbling Dreams.
Any trial is part of the public record, and we could have legitimately revealed the names of the people we successfully sued for breach of contract. However, by the time of publication two of the three defendants were out of business, and to further publicize their names would not have helped other homebuyers. (The names were published in The Cleveland Plain Dealer after the trial, and this publicity may have hastened the business demise of one defendent, who by then had gained a reputation as a less than competent builder). Also, even though one is fully protected by the First Amendment in writing about a matter of public record, we certainly did not wish to deal with these people in any legal sense ever again, no matter how remote the possibility. Most importantly, however, we wanted to tell the story to the nation at large, not just people in Cleveland; using actual vs. real names should make no difference to our intended audience.
Nothing. First, we had sued them and won on breach of contract (a pyrrhic victory, as it turned out). Second, every word in the books about our case is true. There wasn't much they could say or do (except call unwanted attention to themselves).
By the people who read them, very well. Crooked House was reviewed in several newspapers, and bought by many libraries; reviews were uniformly positive. Crumbling Dreams was also favorably reviewed, but not as extensively as Crooked House. About the first book, one reviewer wrote:
And They Built A Crooked House is Ruth Martin's retelling of the whole horrific story. . . the reader is confronted with a virtual encyclopedia of ineptitude, dishonesty and greed on the part of almost every so-called professional the couple trusted [and] paid. . . Shoddy construction is only half the story here. The American system of justice is also taken to task. . . And They Built a Crooked House is an incredible but not uncommon story. People in the construction industry can regale listeners with stories of similar atrocities. . . it should be required reading for those considering the average person's largest single purchase, a home.
On a more personal note, several acquaintances who read Crooked House told me it made them cry.
We could not find a royalty publisher for Crooked House, because most of them thought the story too local, despite the important lessons it contains (and the fact -- as many have told us -- that it is a "gripping read"). So we published the book ourselves. We did not seek out a royalty publisher for Crumbling Dreams, since we had already set up Lakeside Press by that time.
A few copies of each title are still available, but the books are not being reprinted at this time. It is expensive to print and distribute trade paperback books, and the profit margin is slim (unless many, many copies are sold in a short interval). Also, the internet has made it possible to "publish" without going to paper. In fact the internet provides opportunity to disseminate to a world wide audience at a fraction of the cost of print distribution. At some point in the future, the books may be reprinted, or in some way become part of a commercial enterprise (perhaps through the internet). For now, we are content to make them available free on the internet. We still retain full copyright, which means they cannot be copied for distribution from any other web server. They may, however, be downloaded and/or printed for personal use.
It will never be necessary to update Crooked House , because it is a unique and detailed story of one couple's experience with building a new home. (To our knowledge no other book has ever been published detailing a case of civil litigation over residential real estate.) The facts of the case in the 1980s will never change, and the lessons learned are timeless.
Crumbling Dreams was published in 1993, and will only need updating to include more recent examples of new-house construction debacles, and also an updated bibliography. However, the warnings provided and the lessons taught in Crumbling Dreams are also timeless.
The books have two major themes. One is that, for the "largest investment you'll ever make" (i.e., your house), it is still caveat emptor all the way. People who buy a new home and never have serious problems are just plain lucky; they cannot begin to imagine the horrors of buying a defective home that the builder refuses to fix. It is caveat emptor or "buyer beware," because if you experience this awful result (defective home, irresponsible builder) you are out of luck; there is no legal protection that has any real meaning to the buyers. A contract signed by bad people (read: amoral, dishonest) is worthless, and trying to enforce it is an exercise in futility. The key is not to rely on any contract but to prevent the problems from happening in the first palce. That is the first major theme.
The second major theme has to do with bad people and injustice. We dealt with three particularly bad people - our home's developer, architect and builder. In the aggregate, these three got away with a level of dishonesty, deceit and incompetence impossible to imagine in the design and construction of a fully guaranteed, custom-built and custom-designed new home. One of them - the developer, who hired the other two and was the main person we sued - was actually rewarded by the court for his flagrant breach of contract. If this statement sounds like hyperbole, you will have to trust us that it is not. It is a fact we will never be able to accept, understand or rationalize (nor will you if you read the book). The experience opened our eyes to all the injustice of the world in a way we never before appreciated; it is pervasive in our society, and no amount of legislation or regulation will change it. The cynical expression is "good guys lose, bad guys win." In truth, someone with morals and scruples is no match for the person who is amoral, dishonest, without scruples or a code of ethics; that type of "bad person" seems to win most every time, whether in home construction or some other commercial enterprise. Pointing this out and explaining the phenomenon in lay terms is the second major theme of the two books.
In researching background for our books, we were surprised to find no other books on the subject. We provide an extensive bibliography at the end of Crumbling Dreams, but not a single book deals with the horrors of litigation over new house construction. Most books offer platitudes about construction contracts, all on the assumption that if you have a good contract you are protected. This is sheer nonsense if the builder renegs; only a precious few books mention the futility of trying to enforce a contract against a bad builder.
There are lots of reasons for the dearth of publications about residential construction litigation (oriented to consumers), not the least being that most people don't want to talk/write about it. Lawyers are embarrassed that, despite all their efforts and enormous expense, they can't help their homeowner clients achieve a satisfactory outcome. (For example, if the purchaser of a defective new home has to spend $50,000 in unreimbursable legal fees to get the builder to fix $50,000 worth of construction mistakes, that is obviously not helpful.) And most homeowners are still living in the defective home and don't want to draw any attention to it. We certainly would not have written the books had the builder fixed our house and we had stayed in it. Lack of books on the subject is in marked contrast to the pervasiveness of the litigation experience, as is amply discussed in Crumbling Dreams.
About our specific house case and home construction, no. Two is enough. However, I am working on a book that expands on the second theme mentioned above. It will deal with bad people in all walks of life, why they invariably "win" against good people, and how to recognize and deal with them. As a psychiatrist I can write about this subject using both our bitter personal experience and professional knowledge.