GARDEN CITY, SC (WMBF) – A Garden City hotel’s homeowners association is taking the engineer who reported structural concerns at the hotel to court.
The Kingfisher Inn HOA filed a class action lawsuit on May 30 that named Saul Martinez and his company among other defendants.
Horry County closed and evacuated the Kingfisher Inn in March 2024 because of Martinez’s professional opinion.
That opinion was that the Kingfisher Inn was experiencing structural issues that could lead to the building’s “imminent collapse,” the lawsuit states. Martinez, according to the lawsuit, also suggested to Kingfisher Inn representatives that he and his company be hired for a multimillion-dollar project to reinforce the building’s foundation.
The HOA originally hired Martinez’s company in 2021 to do structural remediation work at the hotel, with Martinez designing, inspecting and supervising the work, according to the suit.
Years later, in 2024, the HOA went to Martinez again to perform structural engineering inspections of the Kingfisher Inn because various cracks in the concrete were discovered.
After this inspection, Martinez and his company told the Kingfisher Inn and county officials the building could collapse, recommending the county evacuate the building, the lawsuit states.
But the HOA claims that Martinez and his company failed to follow up or do an in-depth inspection to verify his findings.
The HOA said this led them to get two other structural engineers to check out the building in the weeks after the closure.
They found nothing that showed the Kingfisher Inn was at risk of collapsing, the suit claims.
The HOA included an affidavit from one of the engineers who came to that conclusion in the filing. In it, the engineer claims that Martinez did not perform an adequate investigation and take the necessary measurements.
“As expected, we observed grout beds under the wall panels,” an engineer’s report included in the filing reads. “In our opinion, this demonstrates that the structural issues we are seeing are the result of the original construction. In fact, most of the slopping we observed was created with the original construction and is not the caused by foundation settlement.”
However, the engineer’s report did note that there are “deficiencies” that need to be addressed in the building, specifically mentioning signs of spalling or bits of concrete chipping away and structural issues with the floor system.
The report also noted that only 10 to 15% of the units had finishes removed to allow for inspection.
The HOA said that further investigations not only showed that the building was not in danger of collapsing, but also shed light on Martinez’s repairs in 2021.
“Upon further inspection and review by other qualified engineers, it has come to light that the 2021 repair work was defective and the repairs are failing causing further damage to the KFI (Kingfisher Inn) and resulting in further damage to the Plaintiffs as they have to expend additional sums to remove, repair, and replace the 2021 repairs,” the lawsuit states.
The HOA claims it has lost income, property value and reputation.
It is suing for all actual, direct, indirect, resulting, consequential and punitive damages in amounts to be determined at the trial of this case.
The Kingfisher Inn said in May that everyone is hard at work on repairs so they can reopen once again.
WMBF News reached out to Martinez for comment on the lawsuit. We have not heard back yet.
The court documents can be viewed below:
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