Homeowner Says Crews Demolished Wrong House

Al Byrd got a phone call Monday that he'll never forget. His house was torn down. A demolition company had been hired to demolish a house but didn't have an address, just GPS coordinates. Those coordinates led the crew to Al's house. "You can't imagine. It's just incredulous that something like this can happen and no one contact the owner," said Byrd. The demolition company said that they had paperwork for the demo. "I said, 'Paperwork for what?' and he said, 'For the house, to demolish the house.' I said, 'I'm the owner of the house, I haven't given anybody any authority to demolish this house.' I said, 'What address did you have?' and he said, 'They sent me some GPS coordinates.' I said, 'Don't you have an address?' (and) he said, 'Yes, my GPS coordinates led me right to this address here and this house was described,'" said Al.

Comments

Bright side

[Anonymous Coward]

The bright side is it was in America. They will get sued no doubt (I hear you guys love doing that) and the former home-owner will be millionaires.

Re:Bright side

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not as if the company will make any kind of amends if he doesn't sue, but it looks like he's at least trying to get ahold of the company that hired the demolition people, rather than go after the demolitionists themselves.

Re:Bright side

[extremescholar]

The first rule of lawsuits is to sue everyone. You sue the wrecking company, the people who hired the wrecking company. You also sue the gps maker for giving faulty coordinates. You sue the manufacturer of the equipment used in the demolition, the local government, the local police force, all of your neighbors, and microsoft.

Re:Bright side

[Anonymous Coward]

And Sony, always sue Sony.

Re:Bright side

[Wisconsingod]

Unfortunately No. The Homeowner will sue, be AWARDED millions of dollars, the company will file for bankrupsy protection, rebuild under a different name, and the homeowner won't see a penny. Winning a Lawsuit is easy, collecting on it is a completely different beast.

I-Robot without robots

[janwedekind]

I guess the company has a website with a map where you use your mouse to mark a rectangular region to be demolished while Javascript interactively displays square meters and dollars in the top-left corner of the map. After checking out and paying with your credit card, you get a tracking ID which you can use to track the demolition status. Other countries will need decades of progress to reach this level of integration.

Re:I-Robot without robots

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, he probably used google earth. Google sometimes sets the house address off by 2 or three houses. (my whole neighbor hood is three houses off)

inb4 Hitchhiker's guide

[Anonymous Coward]

That house was in the way of a new super highway! Besides, he could have checked the public records, it was all there for years.

Highway

[aaptel]

It's ok, they're just building a highway.
Obligatory quote:

  "But Mr Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning
office for the last nine month."
          "Oh yes, well as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them,
yesterday afternoon. You hadn't exactly gone out of your way to call
attention to them had you? I mean like actually telling anybody or
anything."
          "But the plans were on display..."
          "On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."
          "That's the display department."
          "With a torch."
          "Ah, well the lights had probably gone."
          "So had the stairs."
          "But look, you found the notice didn't you?"
          "Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a
locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door
saying Beware of the Leopard."

Isn't this similar to bombing the wrong place ?

[ls671]

Could this "GPS" error be similar to some bombings of the wrong spots in military conflicts ?

Well that's the coordinates I had on my mission papers and that's where my GPS told me to drop the bomb... ;-)