Idaho court sides with Hanks, Wilson
Couple seek second arbitration on Sun Valley home’s defects
BOISE – The Idaho Supreme Court has ruled that Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson can take the contractor of their high-end Sun Valley home back to arbitration over claims of shoddy workmanship.
The unanimous high court ruling handed down Wednesday came in a long-running battle between the couple and Storey Construction, the company they hired to build their sprawling villa in 2000.
Hanks and Wilson said they discovered defects in the construction that were not immediately obvious and asked for arbitration of their claims. But Storey Construction said that because they had already gone to arbitration once, any additional claims were barred, and a lower court agreed.
The Supreme Court reversed that ruling, agreeing with the acting and film-producing couple that their contract with the company didn’t prohibit additional arbitration over newly discovered defects.
Miles Stanislaw, the attorney for Storey Construction, said his client was considering its legal options, including “ways to bring additional statutory and contractual issues to the court’s attention.”
“The important thing about the decision is that it made absolutely no finding that there was any work done incompetently by Storey Construction,” Stanislaw said Thursday.
The Idaho Supreme Court found that the terms of the contract between the parties required only that they address all claims known at the time of arbitration, and that an arbitrator can decide this time around whether any of Hanks’ and Wilson’s new claims were dealt with in the previous arbitration.