Bad drywall alleged in 100,000 homes

FORT MYERS, Fla., Dec. 1 (UPI) -- A dispute concerning how many homes were built with defective drywall may be resolved in a Florida federal court, attorneys said.

Federal and state officials have estimated 100,00 homes -- 16,00 of which are in the Fort Myers, Fla., area -- contain defective Chinese drywall, the Bradenton Herald reported Tuesday.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission received approximately 2,100 complaints from 32 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, with about two-thirds of them from Florida, CPSC spokesman Scott Wolfson said.

"If you look at the empirical data at this time, it does not equate to 100,000 homes,'' he said.

Others said 100,000-home estimate is valid, possibly even low, and the number of complaints does not reflect how many homes were actually built with the defective material.

"There are a lot of people still in denial or unaware of this stuff,'' said Thomas Martin, president of Americas Watchdog, a Washington, consumer-advocacy group.

The Florida Department of Health received 678 Chinese drywall complaints, but did not inform the CPSC of them, health department spokeswoman Susan Smith said.

"I don't see any association between complaints and the scope of the problem,'' said Scott Weinstein, a Fort Myers lawyer on a committee representing plaintiffs in drywall litigation.

Weinstein said he and other attorneys will prove the validity of the estimate in the trial scheduled to start in January.