LINDON — The front steps to the Hess home are brickless and sloping.

Above the dining room table, the white ceiling sags and has even split, leaving a gap in what used to be pristine plaster.

Giant cracks snake across the walls, and at night, Mark and Marilyn Hess used to wake to the creaks and groans of their 6,500-square-foot Lindon home sinking beneath them.

It's been more than three years since the couple filed a lawsuit against their builder, developer and engineer, alleging they were never shown a 1997 report detailing collapsible soils in the area where they built their dream home.

A 4th District Court jury last week came back after nearly nine hours of deliberation and awarded the Hess family just over $3.17 million for home repairs and emotional distress, due to fraudulent nondisclosure and fraudulent misrepresentation by Canberra Development Co. and its chief executive officer, David Allen.

"This shows that justice will happen," said the Hesses' attorney, Stephen Quesenberry. "Of this award, $2.65 million was for mental distress, pain and suffering. That's significant. The rest was for repairs and engineering. We're talking about someone's home here. These jurors understood what we were dealing with."

Quesenberry, a settling-home expert, said he believes this is the largest settlement in Utah for a home-settling case, and the second largest settlement in Utah County for real-estate fraud.

The problems started four years ago, when Mark Hess went downstairs to feed the family dog but couldn't open the back door.

He pushed, pulled and shoved, eventually resorting to a crowbar.

As soon as he got the door open, Hess said he heard the house shift and settle even more. At that point, the door became impossible to completely close for the next several years.

In time, most doors and windows in the home became inoperable. And the house continued to settle.

"Every time it rained, the house moved," Hess said. One night, he found himself outside yelling at the sky to stop raining, terrified that his house was breaking apart.

The walls split, the dining room developed a downhill slope, and the basement floor cracked.

The front left corner of the house got so low that Hess was worried the city would "red tag" the home and evict them.

So in May 2005, he put $30,000 on his credit card and had professionals raise the front left corner of the home 5 1/2 inches.

"They told us how much it was going to cost, and I almost choked," Hess said. "I sunk everything I had to get into his home. I've been planning for this for 20 years. This is our first home."

"We didn't ever really want to bail," Marilyn Hess said.

"We wanted to stay, but how do we do it," Hess added. After all, selling the home would be nearly impossible now that they would have to disclose all the problems.

So the family made repairs when they could afford it. And finally in April, crews excavated around the rest of the home, dug up the basement and drove 100 piers 35 feet down until they hit bedrock. For just over $211,000, the house was raised several inches to where it used to sit.

A giant gap between walls in the basement has closed from 8 inches to just under an inch now, but Marilyn Hess still leaves mouse poison nearby to prevent unwelcome guests.

"It's been open for four years," she said. She's had mice, spiders, bugs, cold winter wind and hot summer air.

Outside, the deck pillars are warped and leaning. The deck is permanently poised like the undulating beach tide — unsafe for summer parties or barbecues, Marilyn Hess said.

The family sold their kids' ping-pong table, most of their furniture and Marilyn Hess' wedding ring.

"We just tried to stay afloat," she said.

"This has just been catastrophic for us," Mark Hess said. "Who moves into a brand new house and within a couple of months has to use a crowbar to open a door?"

The stress gave him an ulcer, drained the family's bank account, pushed them toward a lawsuit and taught them to trust each other and God.

The Hesses said they never wanted to take the case to court — they just wanted someone to take responsibility and make them whole.

Canberra and Allen were the two remaining defendants in the lawsuit when it went to trial. The Hesses previously had settled with their construction and engineering companies.

Defense attorney Bruce Baird said Canberra got a soil report in 1997, but it was before any of the 40 or so lots were organized and was not site specific.

Plus, the city and a licensed engineer approved the site, Baird said. And had the Hesses and their builder gotten their own geotechnical reports as was recommended, this problem wouldn't have happened, Baird said.

"Our position was that there was no fault on behalf of Canberra," Baird said. Even if there was fault on behalf of Canberra, they didn't cause the damages. There were three, four, five things that should have been done that would have stopped (the Hesses from building)."

"Mr. Allen and the company still don't believe they did anything wrong," Baird said.

He plans to file an appeal or a request that the judge set aside the jury's verdict and make another ruling. The Hesses don't know when they'll actually see any money.

However, Quesenberry and his colleague, Charles Perschon, argued that developers still have a responsibility to relay all information to a potential buyer, regardless of a city's approval or the OK of an engineer.

They clarified that the Hesses were never required by law to get a geotechnical report, but an excavation observation, which they did.

And all are adamant that the Hesses never saw the soil report — a fact that was proven in court.

"That's why it's fraud," Mark Hess said.

Had they seen Canberra's soil report — which included data from a test plot in what became the Hesses' backyard, and a warning on page two that mentioned collapsible soils in the area — their life would be different.

"It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize there might be problems," Mark Hess said.

E-mail: sisraelsen@desnews.com