I’m wondering if there isn’t the potential for going after the previous owner for a species of fraud. You might be able to make an argument for either constructive fraud or actual fraud.
The Elements of Fraud are:
False representation of a
Material fact
Made innocently or negligently
Reliance upon the misrepresentation
Resulting damage
The trick would be determining whether it was negligent of the seller to not know that the plumbing didn’t hook into the sewer system. I’m wondering if you couldn’t use the fact that the seller didn’t get the necessary permits are part of the case. However, I don’t know what state this is in and the statutes and case law that would govern this are most likely very state specific.
Our home inspector pulled back a little insulation in the crawl space (I was down there with him) to look at a beam more closely. And then he told me what he’d just done was actually illegal - they’re not supposed to MOVE anything.
It’s useless to speculate. The OP obviously needs an atty. w/ RE experience. I suspect there are potential criminal charges here, for whoever did the plumbing work and anyone who knew about it and covered up the fact. If the local DA could be persuaded to pursue a criminal case it might help establish who to sue. A sharp atty. should know how to proceed.
Actually in my opinion the first person you need to call is a damn plumber. See exactly what is going on. I can’t for the life of me phathom why someone would run new plumbing all the way outside the house then not connect to a sewer/septic system. It’s one of those things that will be discovered almost immediatly…so ask why they did it like this. How old is the house? What type of neighborhood is it in? Is it on city sewer? Or do most of the houses around there have a septic system? I ask these questions because when we bought our new house and started rennovations on it one of the things we strongly suspected was that it didn’t have a septic system. It’s a very old house in an old neighborhood…the property backs up to a marshy inlet…so you can guess where the sewage was draining. Had I not known about it ahead of time I would have been shocked that any house didn’t have some sort of septic system in place. But this just basically terminated into a bed of oyster shells. Could the builder have been replacing the plumbing and found something like that? So instead of putting in an expensive septic system they tried to just end it like the previouse system was? Find out exactly what is going on…and just as importantly how much it will cost to fix it. If you’re on city sewer, it shouldn’t cost more than a couple of thousand to run a sewer line to the street…a septic system will cost a hell of a lot more. So before you spend an ungodly amount of money on a lawyer, spend a couple of hundred finding out exactly what you have to do to fix the problem. Then decide on a lawyer.
I know this sound like a sily mistake for the OPs Dad, but just to add to the list of silly mistakes-a coworker just bought a house that has no copper in it. Well, almost none. The house was a repo and the power had been disconnected. they went over the house, along with a relative who is a contractor. Seemed OK. After they bought it and turned on the power, they found that thieves had gotten into the attic and cut out all the wires and copper A/C tubing and had done it in a way as to not be immediately obvious. That is the wires snaked into the attic insulation before being cut. Silly for them not to check carefully, such crimes are increasingly common, but there it is. They are slowly tearing out the walls of their new house and installing new wiring, but it is slow and expensive.
You make an excellent point. Even if you intend to take legal action, you’ll need to know what you’re dealing with. It might be that it’s cheaper to just spend the money to fix the problem, than to spend a bunch of money on legal costs w/ the hope of getting a judgement. Then there’s always the problem of collecting, if you do get the judgement. Plus the legal route will take time, lots of time.
Then again, it’s possible that you might want to do both, fix the problem and then try to recoup your losses in court. Some serious decisions to be made.
I’d also like add something. You should contact a lawyer FIRST. Don’t start making calls to the people you think are responsible. Let the lawyer deal with that. My reason is that if you start asking questions before you contact the lawyer it’ll give the other guys more time to find ways to get out of it. What I mean is, the lawyer might say, “I know who to sue, I’ll serve them with papers on Monday” OTOH, if you start making calls and then go to the lawyer, the lawyer might find them hard to get a hold of. If the plumber is already a bit shady, he might find this a good time to skip town. If a contractor did it, he might suddenly decide to not be in the office for a few months. Whatever the case is, let the lawyer deal with it.