Nearly 500 Residents Sue Woodlands Land Development Over Harvey

THE WOODLANDS, TX — Nearly 500 homeowners in The Woodlands Timaron Park subdivision filed a lawsuit alleging faulty subdivision design resulted in the severe flooding they endured after Hurricane Harvey made landfall last year.

The lawsuit alleges that The Woodlands Land Development Company L.P., the Howard Hughes Corporation, and LJA Engineering Inc. designed the Timarron Park subdivision and allowed homes to be built at inadequate elevations despite decades of flooding in the nearby Spring Creek area.

The homeowners are represented by Tommy Fibich of Fibich, Leebron, Copeland, & Briggs, of Houston; Muhammad S. Aziz of Abraham, Watkins, Nichols, Sorrels, Agosto & Aziz, of Houston; Annie McAdams of Annie McAdams PC, of Houston; Larry G. Dunbar of Dunbar Harder PLLC, of Houston; and James E. Bradley of the Bradley Law Firm, of Houston.

“We allege the developer made errors by building all or some of the homes in Timarron at an elevation that was unreasonably low for the elevation of the land it was built on. It knew or should have known to build the houses at an elevation adequate to prevent or reduce the likelihood of flooding,” Aziz said.

According to the lawsuit filed on behalf of 485 homeowners, the defendants knew or should have known flooding had occurred at least five times, including October 1994 flooding, in the Timarron Park area in the 40 years before Hurricane Harvey.

The lawsuit alleges, despite knowingly building in a 500-year flood plain, defendants did not develop and build homes in a manner that put them outside of a 500-year flood plain to reduce the likelihood of flooding.

Defendants had no set standards for determining the elevation of a house relative to its geographic location and that location’s risk of flooding.

Furthermore, to the extent it did take into account standards for determining the elevation of a home, the standards were based on obsolete, antiquated data instead of newer, more reliable data that was readily available.

“Because of the negligence and violations of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act we allege, our clients have been displaced from their homes and have endured and will continue to endure months and years of costly repairs and rebuilding,” McAdams said

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