Jury Awards $6.6M to Tenants in Toxic Mold Lawsuit
LAS VEGAS (KLAS) – A Clark County jury awarded a young family in Las Vegas $6.6 million in compensatory and punitive damages, sending an expensive message to the apartment management company sued for failing to fix leaks or prevent the growth of toxic mold which made the plaintiffs – a mother and her two children – chronically ill. The management company, court documents show, has asked the court to grant it a new trial.
Anna Andrews, a mother of two young children at the time, moved into an apartment at LasPalomas Apartments on Boulder Highway in the east Las Vegas valley from August through most of November 2019.
In the five years before the Andrews family moved into building 12, the defendant, Anza Management of Newport Beach, California, court documents and exhibits show, fielded 11 complaints of ceiling and roof leaks there.
A further examination of legal documents and courtroom video of the December 2024 trial, the 8 News Now Investigators also discovered that the building’s residents had complained 25 times of water leaks and mold inside that very same building.
On November 23, 2019, after a record-breaking amount of rainfall a few days prior, Andrews’ ceiling collapsed on her, sending her onto the ground and sending her teenage daughter to the hospital with an asthma attack. Andrews’ attorneys argued that Anza management was to blame for not responding to the myriad complaints over the course of several years.
“This is a case about toxic mold poisoning,” Patrick Kang, attorney for the Andrews family, told the jury in his opening statement. “You’re going to hear allegations that leaks led to toxic mold in the Andrews family unit causing permanent immune injuries.”
When Andrews testified, she said her family battled health problems during their entire stay at Las Palomas. She said her daughter’s asthma worsened, her son had earaches and headaches, and she always felt sick.
Kang asked Andrews, while testifying, how she felt “right now.”
“I’m not feeling good, and I’m trying to keep it together,” Andrews answered. I have a headache that I feel coming on.”
At another critical portion of her testimony, Andrews explained more about her chronic illness.
“I just had, like, flu-like symptoms all the time. And, like, I had a cold, and stuffy nose, and sore throat. Diarrhea,” she added.
“Could you just have had the flu?” Kang asked, to which Anza’s attorney, Elizabeth Skane, objected.
Skane, in her opening statement to the jury, said Andrews’ lawsuit was “a setup” in which her attorneys were trying to use the ceiling collapse as a way to cash in at Anza’s expense. She said her client “addressed immediately” all complaints of leaks in building 20, and that “a few roofing leaks does not make a mold claim.”
“Has he given you a reason why millions of dollars is a fair and reasonable price for the injuries Ms. Andrews claims she suffered, even if you believe those injuries are true?” Skane asked the jury, rhetorically.
The jury answered, literally, with its multi-million-dollar verdict. It found Anza Management negligent in causing Andrews’ and her children’s injuries.
Anza, court documents show, has asked the court to grant it a new trial. Skanes, in a statement to the 8 News Now Investigators, wrote, in its entirety:
“Anza Management Company believes that the jury’s verdict is the result of multiple legal errors and is actively challenging the trial result in post-trial motions and an appeal. Anza is a property management company that operates under the terms of its agreements with property owners. The jury’s verdict was the result of a misunderstanding about Anza’s role and authority to conduct repairs at the property at issue, as well as other legal errors that limited Anza’s ability to defend itself in this case. Anza is confident that the errors that led to this result will be corrected in the ongoing litigation. Although your email mentions a motion for sanctions, there is no pending motion for sanctions and Anza Management Company was not sanctioned. Finally, it is our understanding after speaking with the two defense experts who testified at trial that you did not interview or contact our expert witnesses for your report.”
Indeed, the 8 News Now Investigators interviewed two defense experts in researching this story.
One, a mold expert, said that Anza Management could have done more to ensure its tenants’ safety.
“Well, first of all, why are you renting a unit that leaks when it rains?” Dale Walsh of Walsh Certified Consultants in Las Vegas said. “You know that’s, you know, the habitability issue. And so allowing that unit to be leased, not fixing the roof, you know. They [Anza’s attorneys] kept talking about ‘Oh, well, we fix it whenever it leaks.’ It’s, like, that’s not fixed.”
Source: 8newsnow.com
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