Siegel

The owner of a home containing latent construction defects may maintain an action in tort against the builder for any resulting damages. But when there are several successive owners, to which of them does the cause of action belong: to the person who owns the home when the structure first sustains some appreciable but undetected harm, or to the subsequent owner who first discovers the harm? Put another way, does the cause of action accrue when the structure suffers physical damage, or when the owner suffers a compensable economic injury as a result? Has the owner suffered an injury, for example, if he or she is unaware the wooden framing within the walls is slowly deteriorating from water damage?

This is a construction defects action brought by James A. Siegel and Louis Sanchez, the subsequent owners of homes built by Anderson Homes, Inc. (Anderson), alleging the homes contained numerous preexisting defects, and structural damage, which they discovered only after having purchased the homes. Anderson moved in limine to exclude evidence of the defects and the damage on the ground they had given rise to causes of action in the original owners such that, absent an assignment…