Chinese Drywall: Happy New Year!
September 6th, 2009. By AbiK
You can either choose to look at it as glass half-full, or glass half-empty. I’m betting that folks who’ve been living in the hell known as Chinese drywall have been looking at it as glass all-the-way empty and are somewhat numb by now to any developments in this story.
The latest is that now we have a target date for the inaugural Chinese drywall case going to court: January 2010.
U.S. District Judge Eldon Fallon told lawyers this week that he’s looking for them to select six plaintiffs whose cases will begin to be heard early next year. For anyone who’s been keeping tabs on the Chinese drywall story, this is the ball getting rolling on the “fast-tracking” of cases that was reported on a few weeks ago; it’s good news that things are getting moving; it’s a reality check that these 6 plaintiffs represent less than 1% of the total 681 reported with the CDC as of mid-summer.
Yes, LESS THAN 1%.
And lead plaintiff lawyer, Russ Herman, estimates that while only (only!) 400 plaintiffs have filled out profile forms for the Chinese drywall litigation, there may be as many as 12,000-20,000 clients out there represented by all the plaintiffs’ lawyers (businessweek.com, 9/3/09)
But these six will be the so-called bellwhether cases. So a lot is hanging on them.
Hopefully that’s good news to the remaining 99+% of folks who will still be awaiting their fate—or the fate of their homes. Homes that many of them won’t spend Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Christmas, or New Year’s at. Happy New Year!
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