By Celeste M. Hammond and Virginia M. Harding
The following headline appeared on AOL News on May 11, 2010: “Sinkhole Swallows Quebec House, Family Missing.”
Unless they had already read “This Town Is Going Down, and Strawberries Share the Blame — Florida’s Plant City Plagued by Sinkholes,” which appeared on the front page of the April 19 edition of the Wall Street Journal, the story that followed this horrifying AOL headline should have put real estate attorneys on notice that sinkholes are yet another hazard that property owners can face without realizing that such a risk exists. After all, most property owners rarely think about what may be happening below the surface of their land.