What seemed like a victory for the little guy didn't turn out that way. Many home buyers who'd sought compensation ended up with a small check and securities.

Meanwhile, the ex-executives appealed their convictions, leading to Tuesday's dismissal by a three-judge panel in Atlanta.

While agreeing that GDC had overvalued its homes, the judges ruled that "people of ordinary prudence" could have investigated the marketplace before purchasing.

In other words, the customers were at fault—not GDC's bosses. It's a coldhearted view, but the reasoning has logic.

Basically, the judges are asserting what many of us have known for generations: that anyone buying real estate in Florida should trust no one and assume the worst.

Lawyers for the defendants have tried to put a more positive spin on the court's ruling, claiming it vindicates the late GDC as a fair and honorable firm.

And never mind about those guilty pleas.

A gift for dad who has it all in his backyard

December 5, 1996

If you live in a Lennar development, here's the perfect holiday gift for Dad: a shiny new backhoe, so he can find out what's buried in your yard.

The residents of Hampshire Homes in Miramar already have watched as 260 truckloads of tires and trash were hauled out of the infamous sinkhole that opened up there.

Now, three former subcontractors for Lennar Homes have come forward claiming that company officials told them to bury illegal trash at 19 construction sites in Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties.

According to the subcontractors, the debris included household appliances, auto parts, batteries and even a fuel drum.

Last week, the president of Lennar Homes said the company never ordered anyone to bury junk beneath its developments, because that would've been against the law! "Some fuel drums might have been buried," Stuart Miller said, "but it was not done under company direction."

For alarmed homeowners, the most pressing issue isn't who ordered the trash buried, but what exactly got buried where.

Lennar doesn't offer random excavations of its subdivisions, although the company promises to haul off any unsightly debris that might surface unexpectedly.

That's fine if your dog happens to dig up a rusty Maytag near the hibiscus or a seeping 12-volt Delco under the swing set. But what if the junk is buried too deeply for Fido?

The former Lennar subcontractors say washing machines and other secret goodies are interred beneath FPL power lines in the upscale Coral Springs developments of Turtle Run and Whispering Woods.

At Tamarac's Kings Point, they said, the mother lode of debris is entombed within the banks of lakes.

And somewhere beneath the Images of Pembroke Pointe is the not-so-scenic image of a buried fuel drum.

Even if your hobby is archaeology, you probably wouldn't buy a house if you knew it was built above or even adjacent to an underground dump site.

But more than a few Florida developments are. The law allows limited on-site disposal of lumber, tree stumps and nonhazardous construction materials, but some builders bury all sorts of nasty stuff. It's cheaper than paying hauling fees, plus you get to keep the fill.

The sneaky practice was widespread in years past, and almost never disclosed to potential buyers. Lennar would've sold very few houses had Hampshire Homes been straightforwardly advertised as Tierra del Tire Dump or Sinkhole Estates.

Recent headlines have piqued the interest of hundreds of other Lennar customers, who now wonder what's percolating beneath the surface of their neighborhood. Also curious is Florida's attorney general, who has subpoenaed records from all Lennar developments dating back to 1980.

The company president says the files weren't always meticulously maintained. That could make it difficult to determine which subdivisions are at risk.

For concerned homeowners, even a small backhoe would be a big help. Lennar should provide them free to anybody brave enough to buy one of its houses.

That way there will be no guesswork or suspense. Once you notice the shrubs blackening or the patio furniture starting to melt, you can dig up the lawn and find out what the heck's buried down there.

Apparently Lennar isn't that eager for you to know. So, at least for this season, it's up to Santa to bring Dad that backhoe—and maybe a lightweight metal detector for Mom, too.

And don't forget the kids. Just imagine the joy on Christmas Day if they woke up to find cute little Geiger counters in their stockings!

Our dream, our nightmare

September 13, 1998

The least startling headline of the last few days: The Sierra Club has rated South Florida one of the most blighted places in the country for unchecked urban sprawl.

Among the major metropolitan areas, Broward County ranks ninth nationally in annihilating of wetlands, farms and forests since 1990.That statistic is surprising only because Broward didn't take first place—imagine eight other regions actually doing a worse job of planning.

Elsewhere in Florida, Tampa ranks 14 and Miami-Dade is 18 on the Sierra list. Nationally, the top spot for runaway urban sprawl is fast-mushrooming Atlanta.

Losing land to development was only one factor considered by the Sierra Club when evaluating the impact of metropolitan expansion. The group also looked at pollution, water consumption, traffic congestion and population.

The critical yardstick is density, the ratio of people to land mass, and few places are as densely packed as South Florida. Nowhere is the ugliness more evident than southwestern Broward, where a drive along I-75 reveals little but rooftops, as far as the eye can see.

If the torrid pace of paving continues, Pembroke Pines, Coral Springs and other hot spots will eventually make Hialeah look like the Garden of Eden.

According to census data and University of Florida economic research, by 1997 Miami-Dade's population added up to 2,070,473 people living in an area of 2,109 square miles—or about 982 persons per square mile.

By contrast, Broward had 1,439,663 residents living within a much smaller area, 1,220 square miles. That works out to a nerve-jangling 1,180 persons per square mile, the human equivalent of living in a beehive.

The true elbow-to-elbow density of both counties is actually higher, when you eliminate their vast, unpopulated Everglades acreage.

Only one place in the state is more statistically overchoked: Pinellas County, the St. Petersburg/Clearwarer area, where more than 2,700 people are shoehorned into every square mile. If they were rats, they'd probably be gnawing each others' limbs off.

Inevitably, growth has slowed dramatically in Pinellas, as it has in Miami-Dade—not only because these places are running out of room, but because people are running away. In large numbers, they're fleeing the woes and headaches of rapid urbanization—crime, traffic, taxes, sardine-can classrooms.

Where are the disenchanted going? Broward, according to population experts. Then Palm Beach, Martin and St. Lucie along the east coast; Lee, Collier, Charlotte and Sarasota on the west coast.

That's the great, bitter irony. About 800 people a day move to Florida in pursuit of a dream that's being obliterated by their own footprints. It's a dream they're destined to chase from one end of the state to the other, trying to escape all the other dreamers.

Thousands have fled Miami-Dade for Broward, and now Broward is more densely congested than Dade. In a few years, the same thing will likely happen to Palm Beach County, and hordes will flee there in search of someplace more sane and livable.

An advanced civilization might produce leaders who would learn from the foolhardiness of others and take steps not to inflict the same ills on their own communities.