Susan Sarandon attended Rufus Wainwright’s fiftieth birthday celebration at The Montauk Level Lighthouse on July 13, 2023, in Montauk, New York. Roy Rochlin / Getty
By Shannon Larson, The Boston Globe
When she ultimately determined to depart her high-profile profession behind, Oscar-winning actress Susan Sarandon envisioned herself settling into retirement at a sustainably constructed dwelling in a pastoral nook of southern Vermont.
However that dream has not panned out as Sarandon, 76, had hoped, based on a federal lawsuit she filed on Aug. 17 towards a Massachusetts development agency she employed to construct her $2 million dwelling in Stamford.
Sarandon is suing DeGrenier Contracting and Property Administration in Clarksburg, a small city just some miles south of Stamford,over “intensive issues” with the house, based on the criticism. Amongst 47 points that “require completion or correction” are buckled siding, mould, lacking insulation, and warping shingles, the swimsuit alleges.
Sarandon bought the 45-acre property close to the Massachusetts border in 2018 by her legal responsibility firm, The Proper to Bear Farms, which introduced the swimsuit towards Chad DeGrenier, his spouse, Carin DeGrenier, and their firm. The agency couldn’t instantly be reached for touch upon Wednesday.
A longtime determine in Hollywood with starring roles in movies similar to “Thelma & Louise” and the newly launched superhero film “Blue Beetle,” Sarandon can be recognized for her political and social activism.
When she purchased the land in Stamford, which was “totally undeveloped apart from a small cabin,” her “clear imaginative and prescient” for the house entailed a single-family residence that “can be sustainable,” based on the lawsuit.
The house would “ideally be totally off-the-grid, the place she and her household may develop their very own meals, make the most of photo voltaic panels for electrical energy, make the most of water from the property’s nicely, and rely solely on geothermal power for heating and cooling,” the swimsuit reads. As soon as she retired, Sarandon deliberate on shifting therecompletely and changing into concerned in the area people, the place she already had pals, based on the lawsuit.
It was throughout a go to with household round Thanksgiving final 12 months that Sarandon and others “noticed numerous points with development completion and high quality,” the swimsuit alleges. She introduced the difficulty to the eye of Chad DeGrenier however he didn’t “appropriate them sufficiently or correctly” and as an alternative “largely downplayed the problems and falsely said that they had been regular,” the criticism alleges.
Throughout one other go to in January, she and her pals noticed extra points, which the lawsuit claims had been additionally not correctly addressed. In response, Sarandon retained engineers to “conduct an engineering investigative report,” based on the lawsuit.
“Many of those development defects are as a consequence of Mr. DeGrenier’s constant failure to pick out and handle certified, unbiased contractors, and his follow of choosing family and friends members to assemble or set up particular parts of the house, in addition to as a consequence of his failure to correctly handle these contractors that he did choose,” the swimsuit alleges.
The lawsuit claims that DeGrenier misrepresented his {qualifications} for constructing the house, failed to supply documentation and a punch record, ignored considerations aboutdevelopment defects, and that there have been “inconsistencies in Mr. and Mrs. DeGrenier’s invoicing, accounting, and record-keeping practices.”
The criticism additionally alleges that Chad DeGrenier was paidpractically $140,000 to function the property’s caretaker after the home was constructed however “carried out basically no work” pursuant to that deal. As an alternative, he used roughly $91,000 of the funds acquired to “buy a snowblower and register it in his identify,” the swimsuit alleges.
DeGrenier rescinded that settlement in April after he was repeatedly questioned about his work, based on the lawsuit.
The lawsuit is in search of a jury trial to evaluate damages on claims of breach of contract, fraudulent misrepresentation, and unjust enrichment towards the corporate.
