Billionaire Palmer Luckey keeps getting stuck in the elevator of his car mansion, lawsuit claims

hgetahun@insider.com (Hannah Getahun)
·2 min read

  • Palmer Luckey claims the elevators and scissor lifts in his Newport Beach home keep getting stuck.

  • Luckey is suing the builders of his home, which is meant to house his automobile collection.

  • Luckey said the builders breached their contract, but the builders denied the claims.

War weapons entrepreneur and Oculus founder Palmer Luckey is suing the developers who helped build his Newport Beach, California mansion because people kept getting stuck in the scissor lifts and elevator in the home, a lawsuit claims.

Luckey purchased the mansion in 2017 for $3.8 million to house his "collection of automobiles and to have functioning scissor lifts so as to move these vehicles around and about the multi-level structure," the lawsuit filed in Orange County Superior Court said.

However, the lawsuit claims that the California builders installing the scissor lifts in Luckey's mansion — Custom Cabs, Inc. and W.T. Durant — used "non-compliant and substandard scissor lifts" in the home that operated slower than promised.

The lawsuit also claims the elevator "repeatedly stopped its vertical motion without warning and trapped its occupants inside."

"To date, the Zurich residence remains uninhabitable and unusable with an elevator and scissor lifts which do not properly function," the lawsuit reads.

Luckey is suing for breach of contract and fraud and writes that he incurred "millions of dollars in damages, with a precise amount that will be proven at trial."

Forbes first reported on the lawsuit. In a statement to the publication, Custom Cabs, Inc. denied all claims and said it "filed a motion to strike their claims."

An attorney for W.T. Durant told Business Insider the company has worked on projects with Luckey before with no issues and fulfilled the contract for this project.

"W.T. Durant has done a number of projects for Mr. Luckey before the Zurich Circle project and always had a good relationship with him. While certain allegations have been made in a lawsuit concerning the project, W.T. Durant disputes any connection that it did anything wrong, believes it fully performed its contractual obligations, and any issues which exist are due to the conduct of others."

Luckey and Custom Cabs, Inc. did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Last week, another billionaire's home became the subject of a lawsuit. That suit claimed that OpenAI founder Sam Altman's $27 million San Francisco mansion flooded due to the pool's bad waterproofing and caused widespread mold.

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