Dive Brief:

The defensive coordinator for the New Orleans Saints and his wife filed a lawsuit on Monday against the developer, builder and engineers that worked on his $2 million Uptown, LA, home, claiming the building is sinking.

Rob Ryan bought the new home in 2013 shortly before he joined the Saints coaching staff. The lawsuit claimed the house was built on soft soil without pilings or properly spaced footings. In addition, it said some of the home’s structural joists are overloaded, and that pipes leak; the air conditioning malfunctioned; and an electrical meter was miswired.

The lawsuit named developers Jim and Catherine MacPhaille, contractor Southern Builders of Louisiana, and two engineering firms.

Dive Insight:

Ryan’s lawyers said in a statement that the Ryans wanted the builders to take possession of the house and refund the purchase price, and their failure to do so “forc[ed] the Ryans to file suit.” The couple said they had to deal with years of construction-related hassles.

But the plaintiffs denied the claims, and, in fact, have accused Ryan of filing the suit to “manipulate us into buying his house back at an enormous profit.”

In a statement, Jim MacPhaille said the house is structurally sound and that the suit is “full of exaggerations, fairy tales and outright misrepresentations in order to paint Rob Ryan as a victim.”

This is not the first housing-related lawsuit involving a Saints coach. Head Coach Sean Payton was the lead plaintiff in a 2009 class-action suit accusing a Chinese drywall manufacturer of selling a product that corroded metal appliances and electrical equipment in homes and made the occupants sick.