"Family imprisoned in a home of horrors; It’s cold, it’s unsafe, and it’s falling down around their ears, but Southborough couple’s dream house is just about all they have left" by David Abel, Globe Staff / April 1, 2011
SOUTHBOROUGH — From a distance, the lemon-colored clapboard house on Lovers Lane looks like a picture of the American dream, which is what the four-bedroom, three-car garage home symbolized for Kathryn and Christian Culley when they moved into the newly built home five years ago.
Since then, it has become the symbol of something very different: a colossal money pit.
The couple, who invested their life savings in the million-dollar home, have spent hundreds of thousands of additional dollars seeking help from engineers, contractors, and lawyers. They now have so little left that they cannot afford to heat the 3,500-square-foot home, which the state Department of Public Safety has found to be unsafe to inhabit.
“We’re completely marooned in the house,’’ said Kathryn Culley, 48, a mother of two teenage boys, who stays warm by wearing her winter jacket inside, covering all the windows in plastic, and using space heaters. “We can’t afford to leave, and we can’t afford to fix it. We never thought we would have found ourselves in this kind of situation.’’
What has made the Culleys’ plight more difficult is that last summer, after a monthlong trial in Middlesex Superior Court in which they sued their contractor, broker, and seven others, the presiding judge made the rare decision to overrule the verdict of a jury that awarded the couple nearly $1.1 million, or the value of the home.
Welcome to fascist Massachusetts.
Why even bother serving?
See: Mass. Needs Less Laws
Why bother serving? So the judge can overturn the verdict?
Judge Thomas R. Murtagh ruled that the damages the jury awarded to the Culleys were excessive. The judge said the couple could accept a reduced award of about one-tenth of what the jury said the couple should receive or they could choose to have a new trial about the damages.
“The court concludes that the verdict goes against the weight of the evidence and was likely due to misapprehension, confusion, or passion,’’ the judge wrote in his decision in December.
The result has insulted jurors and left the couple in a kind of legal limbo....
--more--"
Next time I'm called I'm going to be a stealth subversive against the state.
