The Naples Lemon House

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OUR STORY

This Is Our Story
Our names are John & Diane Mathieu. We are a young couple in our mid to late thirties who purchased a "spec" home in Naples, FL in July of 2003. Please note that we have purposely removed any reference to the people who have created the The Naples Lemon House. We have come to terms and have accepted our situation. We are no longer angry just disappointed that the system has allowed and continues to allow this to happen to US Citizens.

Besides, these people know who they are and they need to look themselves in the mirror each day and track all of the lies they have told themselves and their peers. It really doesn't matter to you who did this to us. Does it? What does matter is that it doesn't happen to you! Should you experience this unfortunate situation, you can at least leverage our experiences to get your life back in order.

The Naples Lemon House
We purchased a "spec" home after it had been completed. We were not part of the building process. Even though we had the home inspected prior to the purchase, we had problems with the house from day one.

In the summer of 2006, we experienced water intrusion which several months later we discovered was caused by major building defects. Little did we know that these hidden defects, according to expert reports, were present since construction and that a dangerous toxic mold had been growing in the second floor columns which supported the third floor decks since the house experienced its first rainfall. We gave the builder ample opportunity to fix what we thought was a simple construction issue at that particular time.

At this point, Diane was very sick. She was constantly nauseous and throwing up daily. Traditional doctors were having a very difficult time identifying the cause of her constant flu like symptoms. Due to her condition, managing our two kids, work, etc., we begged the builder to take care of the problem. He stated that he "...would take care of us and do everything possible to help us."

Title XXXIII Chapter 558
In Chapter 558 of Title XXXIII, the Florida Legislature requires the homeowner to first notify the builder responsible for the defect and allow them an opportunity to repair the defect before the homeowner can bring a lawsuit against them. Our lawyer began this process. The builder said he was going to fix it. We waited until the last day for his proposal and nothing was received. Subsequently, we had to seek legal action after being strung along by his false promises of resolution.

Strangers...
Since the summer of 2006, we have given tours of our home to so many strangers including the developer, the builder, lawyers, adjusters, engineers, mold experts, workers, etc. It was as if our home had become public property. We had several items stolen from the property. And, we had strangers who had not made appointments pulling at our door knobs trying to get inside. There was so much trespassing that we had to post no trespassing signs, send letters out to everyone involved and request neighbors to call us if they saw anyone suspicious.

An Attempt To Move On...
We decided to hire a general contractor to demolish and to rebuild the decks and we would pursue the builder and developer in parallel. We figured we could at least get on with our lives. Once the work began, we realized that the damage was far greater than we had anticipated. Our lawyer put a stop to the repairs immediately. Shortly after this demolishing phase ceased, we had to abandon our home because my wife's health had taken a drastic turn for the worse and the property itself was unsafe in general for habitat. For example, we had second story French doors that led out to balconies which were under repair without sufficient railings to protect a curious two year old, the pool protection fence was down and there was three stories of scaffolding covered by a large blue tarp surrounding the back of our home with nails everywhere.

After we put a stop to the repair of the decks, we had hired additional experts who discovered that there were so many additional building defects, code violations, etc. that the house was not worth repairing at all. In fact, we were told multiple times that it would be more cost effective to tear down the home to the epicor slab and correctly rebuild it to its original specifications. We were heartbroken.

The Damage
According to a roofing contractor and other experts, the roof was not installed correctly and was rusting and leaking; the windows failed a professional water test conducted by an east coast window testing company (This house has 48 or so windows); the third floor decks had completely rotted away due to the improper installation; according to a structural engineer some of the framing was not per structural drawings and the house itself and decks were never secured to the epicor slab per code so if a hurricane would have hit us directly, the decks and subsequently the house would have been torn apart; in addition, there is that original list of items that were never addressed by the builder such as the fireplace was not per code and was causing the wood molding to warp so we could never use it, the AC was not balanced properly leaving some rooms hot and others freezing... The list goes on and is truly mind boggling considering the home was just thirty-six months old at that point. In the near future, we will be posting more pictures of these defects to give you a better idea of the situation.

Family Illness
The result of this toxic mold growth in all of these columns has truly had a negative effect on my entire family which includes our two daughters, just six and three years of age. Above are pictures of my girls having to get their blood drawn to verify if they have mold toxins in their system. I was very sad to watch my kids screaming and crying during the blood draw. My wife actually was crying as well.

When I first met my wife, she was so full of life. Unfortunately, she has been struggling over the years. She quit nursing many years ago to be a stay at home Mom. She was in the lemon house almost every day for three years. Above is what she looks like now after living in this home! The health challenges she faces are unbelievable. She is constantly getting blood drawn and taking all sorts of medicines. Like I said earlier, she is nauseous daily. She vomits daily.

Prior to moving into the lemon house, she was diagnosed with an autoimmune condition by the Mayo Clinic which makes her more vulnerable to mold toxins. Her inital meeting with Dr Schaller produced a need for blood work. The results indicated that she had little to no cancer fighting cells in her body. The toxins had wreaked havoc on her hormone levels and her ability to fight cancer. :(   Click here to view the biotoxin pathway from Dr. Shoemaker.

Prior to Christmas, her gynocologist, Dr. Young, was very concerned that Diane might have developed ovarian cancer. On New Year's Eve day, I had to rush Diane to the emergency room due to severe abdominal pain. This is a picture of her this New Year's Eve at NCH in downtown Naples. That night, Dr. Lee discovered a tumor along with many cysts. Since that time, the tumor has doubled in size in just eight days. Her cancer marker should be about 35. Unfortunately, it is at 400. In addition, her white blood cells were noticeably high. She has many of the symptoms of ovarian cancer. Dr. Orr, an Oncologist, will be performing surgery on Diane this January 23rd. (Please say a prayer for us!)

Update: 01/23/2008 - Diane's CA125 marker is over 400. Should be around 35. Doctors think she has cancer. She goes in for surgery. Tumors are benign. They do a full hysterectomy to remove severe endometriosis, cysts and tumor.

The Loss of Jack
To top it off we had to put our dog, Jack, to sleep in 2005 due to severe skin allergies. He had allergies prior to moving to this home. One of the allergies was mold. Over the two years he lived there, he kept getting worse. The last six months of his life, his health declined rapidly. It was heart breaking watching a dog itch all day and suffer like he did. At the end, his skin was literally bleeding out all over his body. We did everything we could for the poor guy.

After realizing that we needed to abandon our home, we did not have many options for choosing a new place to live. We needed an immediate place to live that would take our new boxer Louie and our old cat Tigger. We moved quickly and left a great deal of our stuff behind including my wife's wedding dress, photos, etc... Over the course of living in the rental, we learned about Gary Rosen's findings. We tried to go back and get some of our stuff, but we just couldn't do it. Diane would get really sick and I would get a bad headache.

Insurance Companies
One would think home owner's insurance would support us through these hardships. After all, in parallel to supporting this rental home, we are also paying the original home's mortgage, taxes, insurances and utilities. Well, just because we paid for insurance does not mean we have any support from them at all. In fact, the insurance company has not assisted us even though they were our provider for the first three years we owned the home. Well, I shouldn't say that they didn't "assist" us. They did suggest to the builder that a claim should be filed with his insurance company because if he waits any longer he might not be covered thus the cost of repairs would have to come out of his pocket. Otherwise, I am certain he would still be making false promises.

After our insurance company pulled out of Florida, in other words they stopped offering insurance to homes on the water as it was not profitable for them, we endorsed a policy with a different insurance policy. We learned of the insurance company from the couple who bought one the builder's homes "as is" from the builder's mother. Anyways, a representative of the insurance company has explained to me that they do not cover construction defects. To top it off, since our claim, our insurance company has raised our rates significantly.

The Fate of The Naples Lemon House
Multiple engineers have estimated that the cost to repair the damages from the major construction defects along with the cost to repair the code violations far exceed the cost to demolish to the epicor slab and to rebuild the home to its original design the correct way. Could you imagine? A home once appraised at $2.6/$2.7 million just a short while back, now only being worth the dirt it rests on after standing for a total of thirty-six months! I wish I was kidding. However, in the fall of 2007, Collier County Tax Assessors assessed our home at lot value!

In Sum
The Naples Lemon House, in our opinion, is a result of the developer's greed along with the builder's greed and incompetency. This unfortunate situation has consumed our lives and has forced me to take a leave of absence from our company to focus exclusively on resolving the health, home and legal battle. The time and effort it takes to manage the requirements of the lawyers, engineers and doctors is mind boggling. My wife has been so ill that my Mom and Dad have played a huge role as caretakers of our children. My wife wanted to stay home and be with our second child like she had done with our first. Unfortunately, she could just about take care of herself. We put our youngest in a preschool full time. And, the other times when they are out of school, my parents often take care of them as well as our pets.

Unfortunately, there is and will be many people in our situation due to the building boom where some developers and builders were building as fast as they could to make a buck leaving the quality at the curb. In fact, curb appeal was the only positive quality our house still has. If you look at the house from the front, you would think there are only minor issues. If you look at it from the back, you would be dumbfounded. After reading this story, I am sure you are speechless. People can't grasp the losses and the suffering we have endured unless they have been in a similar or a comparable situation. We can't even say, "at least we have our health." We have lost everything!

The Future
As we begin to regain our health, and we have at least a year and a half or more to go, we have decided that we will reach out and try to do what we can to help people like us. It would be a tragedy to see another family go through what we have and are enduring. Please pass this website along.

Pictures of My Wife

Pictures of My Kids

Pictures of Jack

News

01/23/2008
Diane's CA125 marker is over 400. Should be around 35. Doctors think she has cancer. She goes in for surgery. Tumors are benign. They do a full hysterectomy to remove severe endometriosis, cysts and tumor.