Suing over sinking

Lawyers for 13 Jamaica Hill homeowners whose houses were damaged or rendered uninhabitable when the buildings began to sink almost seven years ago grilled the city Department of Environmental Protection in court Tuesday.

DEP quizzed in sinkhole case

The homeowners have sued the city for the full costs to repair damage to the properties or the sale value of the houses plus interest since 2001, in State Supreme Court in Jamaica, where the jury and Judge Lawrence Cullen heard testimony in the civil trial's second week.

The homeowners' attorneys contend the damage was caused by an improperly repaired leaky water main that washed the soil away from the houses' foundations. The city countered last week that the culprit was the heterogeneous soil used beneath the houses to fill in a 25-foot hole carved by a glacier.

And in Forest Hills:

The Department of Environmental Protection has put sawhorses across sinkholes at the intersections of Yellowstone Boulevard at Kessel, Juno and Fleet streets. This area was one of several in Forest Hills that flooded during the Aug. 8 storm, although not to the extent that Yellowstone Boulevard did to the north of Queens Boulevard. While the flooding and sinkholes may not be linked, it is noteworthy that the neighborhood is again visited by a problem to do with sewers -- the sinkholes are all located near sewer catchbasins.

Yellowstone Blvd. degrades

How about Manhattan:

Caroline Hunt visited at least 60 properties over six months before setting her heart on a luxurious $1.6 million loft at 74 Grand St. She paid an engineer to inspect the space, invested her savings in a hefty down payment and spent about $100,000 on renovations.

But Hunt never spent even one night in her new bedroom - days before she was due to move in, the entire building shifted, one side dropping 2 feet into the neighboring lot.

Eventually, she and her fellow co-op owners filed suit against 72 Grant Partners, the owners of the lot next door, charging that work there caused the partial collapse, as well as against other contractors and design professionals.

$1.6M dream home in SoHo sinking