By Haleigh Kochanski
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect

A limited liability company representing multiple homeowners have sued a Springfield engineering firm for negligence after a landslide in March made three homes uninhabitable along Rockcress Road in Eugene’s Moon Mountain neighborhood.

The landslide caused significant property damage, “including destruction of one of the homes, loss of use of all three homes, and need for emergency stabilization and mitigation work on all three properties,” according to the lawsuit filed in December in the Lane County Circuit Court.

Former homeowners Brendan Driscoll and Mandy Tang, Tristan McDonald and Sarah Anderson, and Keith Kulyk informed residential homebuilder MonteVista Homes of potential ground destabilization in February.

A month later, the city manager’s office posted “Do not enter” signs on the front doors of the three homes. The notices deemed the homes uninhabitable, forcing owners to evacuate as crews worked to save the structures.

In a Substack blog describing her experience, Tang wrote that she and her husband, her children and two cats evacuated the home, moved their belongings into storage units and relocated into a temporary apartment while awaiting the fate of their single-family home.

“In the past 72 hours, I learned that there was a sinkhole forming under the foundation of my house, my house was deemed uninhabitable by the city, the foundation fell by six feet and I was forced to evacuate,” Tang wrote in her blog published March 24. “… When something so enormous happens, you don’t really know how to write about it or where to start.”

The homes impacted by what Tang called a sinkhole were constructed in 2022 and all sold for more than $600,000.

Contracted geotechnical engineers and other experts who assessed the cause of the ground destabilization confirmed the soil instability was a result of improper structural fill that had been engineered and overseen by Branch Engineering, Inc, the defendant in this case, prior to MonteVista Homes purchasing the Moon Mountain development.

Starting in 2021, BEI provided professional engineering services to MonteVista as homes were constructed starting in 2022, as they were completed and sold in 2023 and 2024, and after homeowners made claims in February about ground destabilization. BEI was tasked with assessing the stability, safety and sufficiency of the property for vertical construction. Ronald Derrick, another defendant in the lawsuit, is a licensed professional engineer who oversaw the project for Branch Engineering, according to court documents.

The lawsuit alleges Derrick failed to properly perform professional engineering services before MonteVista’s involvement at Moon Mountain and failed to disclose to the company the issues related to the slope stability and structural fill.

MonteVista Homes resolved the claims by the former homeowners before the lawsuit filing.

In the lawsuit, MonteVista and the homeowners claim a financial loss in excess of $3 million. The rights and interests of MonteVista and the homeowners have been assigned to Gritstone LLC, a limited liability company that is the plaintiff in the lawsuit.

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