LOS ANGELES, California (October 17, 2012) – A class action lawsuit has been filed in Los Angeles Superior Court - Central District on behalf of a Los Angeles County couple and potentially tens of thousands of California homeowners whose homes’ plumbing systems have been damaged by defective brass plumbing fixtures produced by two major manufacturers, EZ-Flo International, Inc., headquartered in Ontario, CA, and BrassCraft Manufacturing based in Novi, Michigan.

According to the lawsuit filed by the law firm of Kasdan Simonds Weber & Vaughan LLP, an estimated 70,000 residences in California alone have been built since Jan. 1, 2003, with plumbing systems incorporating the defective yellow brass fixtures made by EZ-Flo and BrassCraft.

Ken Kasdan, Senior Partner of Kasdan Simonds Weber & Vaughan, said the plumbing line fittings made by EZ-Flo, BrassCraft and other plumbing manufacturers have been used extensively in the construction of residential homes in many areas of the southwest and throughout the U.S. from Washington to Maine.

It is believed there are tens of thousands of homes in the southwest region including California, Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico that may contain these suspect brass fittings, which were very popular with plumbers working as subcontractors to many of the nation’s largest home builders because of the low cost and ease of use.

The lawsuit states that yellow brass fixtures including angle stop shutoff valves, water stops, and flex lines can suffer from “dezincification” that results in the plumbing line components corroding and eventually becoming blocked. Parts include shutoff valves that are typically used under every sink and faucet, as well as the lines to the toilets in the homes.

”Although dezincification may sound at first like a technical plumbing problem, when you magnify it by 70,000 or more homes in California alone, including sinks, faucets and toilets, it becomes a huge construction defect issue that needs to be addressed as a class for all California homeowners who are affected by the same problem,” said Kasdan. “If a home has these yellow brass fittings as a part of the plumbing lines, some experts believe the only effective solution is to replace all of the defective parts before catastrophic failure occurs that will cost thousands of dollars to repair.”

Kasdan said that under California Civil Code section 896(a)(14)&(15), “(t)he lines and components of a plumbing system . . . shall not leak” and “(p)lumbing lines shall not corrode so as to impede the useful life of the systems.” He pointed out that EZ-Flo and BrassCraft yellow brass fixtures corrode and may cause leaks, and likely will all need to be replaced long before the end of the useful life of the rest of the plumbing system.

Yellow brass fixtures susceptible to dezincification such as those made by EZ-Flo and BrassCraft appear to have a high concentration of zinc in the brass formulation, and less copper. “Zinc is cheaper than copper,” Kasdan noted. According to product investigations, the fixtures fail when they are exposed to potable water because of a chemical reaction (i.e. dezincification) that produces a powdery white corrosion that blocks the plumbing fixtures over time, and deteriorates the brass plumbing lines.

“Plumbing in a home may be suffering silently from dezincification, which is akin to occlusion of coronary arteries,” Kasdan explained. “It can create a terrible mess in a home if not treated in a timely manner because it could result in undetected water leaks inside the home and possibly bursting of pipes.”