I think they know the land owner isn't going to actually lose in this but I think this is the developer's intent to get the court to assign liability portions to everyone and order whatever the path to remediation is going to be. Their hope is likely that they won't be on the hook for 100% of whatever its going to cost to make the land owner whole since she probably wants the house off her lot completely, wants the land returned to as it was before and isn't budging. Then there's the complication of having to evict the squatters at the same time.
I saw something similar happen in rural Georgia. It was about 15 years ago, so some of the details are a little fuzzy.
Basically a county official owned a shitty undeveloped lot across the street from a nice developed lot owned by the county.
The county needed some kind of storage facility, so they built one. Unfortunately the county "accidentally" built the storage facility on the shitty undeveloped lot owned by the county official. No one noticed the mistake until the building was nearly complete.
Luckily the county official was a stand up guy and offered to just switch lots with the county and call it even. What a nice guy, he sure saved the county a lot of embarrassment.
No, the developers are suing the previous owners of the lot, along with like 8 other parties.
Also being sued by the developers are the construction company, the home’s architect, the family who previously owned the property, and the county, which approved the permits.
Looks like a shotgun attempt to get anyone to pay for their fuckup.