Nine years after a Florham Park man bought his dream home, he has still not been able to move in.
Humayun Akhtar bought the home in 2006 for $1.5 million in part of a new Florham Park development. Soon after, a plumber noticed cracks in the foundation. Engineering experts told Akhtar the house is literally sliding down the hill it was built on.
"It's like the Titanic breaking from the center," he says.
Akhtar has been in a legal battle with the contractor and developer ever since. He says they never performed the required soil testing.
He says the contactor filled part of the property with garbage and topped it off with good soil so no one would find out.
Akhtar won a lawsuit against the developer, JDN Properties, and the builder, Deltrus LLC, but they appealed the case and won. The case will now go before a jury.
The developer's attorney contends there was no fraud in this case and that they offered to fix the house or take it back, but that Akhtar declined.