What would you do if you put down $6.9 million on a luxury Beverly Hills mansion, only to find out later that it was (allegedly) riddled with construction defects that caused major damage to the property?
If you’re anything like Rihanna, you’d be heading to the courts with an entourage of lawyers in tow.
That’s exactly what the Barbados bombshell is doing almost 20 months after a January, 2010 thunderstorm that supposedly damaged the home significantly due to defects in the home’s construction. She is suing the former owner – Adrian Rudomin – the construction firm and engineers who actually built the home, the real estate agents who sold the home, and the property inspector in an attempt to mitigate what Rihanna claims is millions of dollars worth of damage and devaluation done to the property.
The main listed defect is faulty waterproofing, which could – in our opinion – cause some extensive water damage. Is that what really happened? Who knows – but we’ll go on record to say if paid $6.9 million for a home that appears to have water damage at all, we’d be suing someone too.
This, believe it or not, isn’t the only lawsuit to occur involving celebrities and real estate. Earlier this summer, Pam Anderson of Baywatch fame sued a Las Vegas condo developer claiming that she was owed either a high-priced condo or $1 million in exchange for her participation as a spokesperson for the development project.
The developer said “Uh, over my dead body” and refused to pay. Not only that; he counter-sued for a hefty $22 million, a loss he said he suffered as a result of the blonde bombshell’s failure to participate in the campaign. We’re still waiting to hear what’s going to come out of this trial.
Legendary Academy Award-winning actress Faye Dunaway is also involved in some legal problems of her own – this time over allegations that she has been paying pennies on the dollar for rent for a walk-up in NYC’s Upper East Side. She’s been paying only $1,048 a month – compared to an average rent of $2,318 – which is not only insane, but also against rent stabilization.
She has since moved out of the apartment, claiming that the apartment was “bad”. We think it was possibly due to the landlord evicting her, but what do we know?
With all that said, Rihanna’s case is worth more than either of the two above cases because of the money involved. Even if the damaged devalued the property “only” by 25%, that is a paper loss of $1.725 million.
We’d do a lot more than launch a lawsuit over that kind of money.