Source: http://hamptonroads.com, October 26, 2015
By: Sarah Kleiner
Rick Ilich was at his wit’s end.
His dream home in the Saddlebrook Estates neighborhood had been silently poisoning his family for years.
It had been built in 2006 with toxic drywall, which filled the air with hydrogen sulfide, a dangerous gas that corrodes metal and can lead to breathing problems, nosebleeds, headaches and fatigue. In high doses, the gas can kill a person instantly.
The builder that installed the drywall wasn’t taking responsibility, and the Chinese company that manufactured it, Taishan Gypsum Co. Ltd., was ignoring lawsuits filed against it in American courts.
Insurance companies were let off the hook because of exclusions in their policies for defects caused by “pollution.”
Ilich’s family was among more than 200 in Virginia left to pick up the pieces on their own. Five years later, despite financial problems and health and marital woes, Ilich says life is starting to improve.
In 2010, though, he, his wife Catherine, their two children and three pets – a dog and two cats – crammed into his in-laws’ house nearby in Suffolk.
Ilich stayed up late at night writing letters, begging for help.
“I have toxic Chinese Drywall in my home that has caused health issues for my family and now we are facing foreclosure, credit devastation, certain economic difficulty, lawsuits against us, and what appears to be a long rocky road,” he wrote to President Barack Obama.
At his request, his lender, U.S. Bank, initially waived his mortgage payments for 90 days but then began threatening foreclosure.
He tried to persuade the bank to agree to a short sale. He knew he would never get what he owed on the mortgage because potential buyers would factor in the more than $100,000 it would cost to rip out the drywall and wiring and replace everything with new materials – not to mention the cost of replacing appliances like the air conditioner and refrigerator, which had broken down over and over.
His homeowners association sued him for $900 in unpaid dues, but he decided to save money on a lawyer and represent himself. He lost the case.
Medical bills were piling up too. His son had been in and out of the hospital with severe asthma, and his daughter had to have surgery to repair a hole in her heart.
In August 2011, Ilich was diagnosed with depression. His marriage was falling apart, and Catherine filed for divorced in 2012.
He lost his fight to remain solvent and wound up filing for bankruptcy. He handed the keys to his house back to the bank and thought he could begin to move on.
When The Pilot wrote about Ilich’s struggles in June 2014, his name was still on the deed because the bank hadn’t filed the paperwork with Suffolk officials showing it had taken over ownership.
Ilich recently told The Pilot that U.S. Bank had finally stopped reporting his former debt to the credit agencies, and his credit score had climbed to about 700 – still worse than what it was before Chinese drywall, but an improvement.
He is still waiting on a settlement check from American companies involved in importing and installing the drywall. It likely will cover a fraction of the hundreds of thousands of dollars he lost.
Taishan surprised homeowners earlier this year when it decided to pay seven families who filed a test case against it. But the thousands of other families in the class-action suit, including Ilich’s, are unsure whether the company will pay them for their losses.
“The Chinese settlement is anybody’s guess as to when and if we will collect,” Ilich said. “My best guess would be four to five more years.”
Otherwise, Ilich said, life is improving.
“I have moved on as much as possible,” he said.