Irish businessman Declan Kelly is suing over the inspection on his Hamptons home.
An Irish-born businessman who once served as Hillary Clinton’s US economic envoy to Northern Ireland is in the midst of a home inspection nightmare, claiming faulty results were the reason he purchased his far-less-than-perfect Hamptons home.
Tipperary-born Declan Kelly is now suing over his faulty East Hamptons home inspection, claiming he was duped into buying his dream $19-million mansion by the inaccurate results.
He now claims that he and his wife Julia would not have purchased the Hamptons home, or at least not spent $19 million on it, if they had been told of the costly faults with the house that they have now been forced to repair. The couple claims that they have had to make a $1 million fix to insert a missing part of the foundation.
Read more: Profile: Declan Kelly, CEO of Teneo – in the eye of the Clinton funding storm
Declan Kelly. Image: RollingNews.ie.
On top of this, they claim to have spent $130,000 on new fireplaces to replace three faulty ones and a further $150,000 to get rid of asbestos.
An inspection of the house was carried out in November 2018 by Westchester-based Carnell Associates Inc.who said that the home was fit for purchase, failing to note the absent foundation under a room which used to be an outdoor porch, three faulty fireplaces and the presence of asbestos.
The Kellys are bringing a Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit against the company.
“It is inconceivable that a home inspector would not notice and flag that major defect,” the couple said.
Kelly comes from humble roots – a small farming family in Tipperary – and had an incredible rise to the top levels of American finance and political influence.
Kelly, 51, from Portroe, Co Tipperary, served as the US economic envoy to Northern Ireland in Hillary Clinton’s State Department and co-founded the consulting firm Teneo.
He was widely considered one of the most talented Irish guys to hit town when he came to New York in 2000. He came down a different path to success in the public relations field, starting off as a journalist in his hometown newspaper in Nenagh, County Tipperary, before working with the Cork Examiner and then leaping into the public relations world. He was named business journalist of the year in 1994.
For a time Kelly controlled access to the Clintons in the Irish American community.
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