Stow, Ohio: Andrea Wagner bought a meth lab home on Meadowbrook Boulevard for $147,000,in January 2006, not knowing that she was buying a home contaminated with meth lab chemicals. The seller, who bought the home at a Sheriff’s auction never told her and Wagner never questioned it. All she knew was that the house looked like it would be a great place to raise her two young children, who were 6 and 3 years old, at that time. She had no idea that police had found so much meth lab equipment, meth, and meth lab chemicals inside the home in May of 2004, that it took a HazMat contractor over 7 hours to remove them from the home.
Andrea Wagner was newly divorced and the home seemed perfect. It was on a quiet street, lined by trees, and there was a pond not far from the home’s spacious yard. Wagner’s view of the home soon changed. While she was unloading some items to take inside her home one day, a woman stopped her car to ask her about the former meth lab home. Afraid of what she’d been told, she immediately called the Stow police to find out if what the woman had told her was true. She says the police didn’t have any record of the bust, so she put the thought behind her.
As time went by though, her children began to have health problems that included coughing, headaches, and skin and sinus infections. Andrea was having migraine headaches. About a year later, a police officer told her that he had been one of the police officers involved in the meth lab bust at her home. To confirm his story, he then showed her the address of her house on a list of contaminated homes that was recorded by the DEA. She was terrified of the danger that she and her children now faced living in a toxin filled home.
She took her children to their grandmother’s house, where they would stay until she figured out what to do. She would eventually move out of the home too, after realizing the threat to her health if she remained in the home. Her next step would be to contact a lawyer to see if she could sue the seller for the wrong that had been done to her and her children. The clean up of her meth lab home had been estimated at about $70,000.
Andrea Wagner stopped paying her mortgage and had the utilities shut off and soon after the mortgage company began proceedings to foreclose on her home, for non-payment. The bank didn’t want to hear her story. From the bank’s viewpoint, the problem with Andrea’s situation was between her and the seller. They still wanted the payments that she had agreed to make to them.
Andrea now owned a home that she and her children could no longer live in, nor could they take any of their belongings with them. She decided to try to sue the seller for not disclosing that the home had been a former meth lab. The lawsuit, according to her lawyer, was unique in the state of Ohio, at that time. While legislators were still deciding about a seller’s responsibility to disclose if a home had been used to make meth, Andrea’s lawyer argued that state disclosure laws already spelled it out – sellers had to disclose if the home contained hazardous materials. The contaminants that remain in a home where meth is made, he said, would constitute hazardous materials.
I have recently found out the the house I purchased in 2001 was used for a meth lab. This information was not disclosed to me when I purchased this house. What do I do? Who should I contact? Should I leave?
I’m a personal injury attorney from Utah. To determine whether your house is a former meth house, you will want to check with your state Department of Housing to see what type of requirements there are for sellers to disclose this. In my opinion, selling a house without disclosing that it is a former meth house is extremely deceptive. It really amounts to fraud. They hold back this critical information to make more money. I think there should be federal law mandating disclosure in all 50 states. Ron Kramer
You need to have it professionally cleaned or move out. Very unhealthy to be breathing the leftover toxic fumes from your A/C & heating ducts.
The DEA has a clandestine meth lab listing. It’s not current as in “last week” current, but it does have the listings from the past decade.
Also, Wyandotte County KS is listed in KY as a typographical error.
So be sure to check any other states that share a letter with the one you live in!