In the end he is using the $50k expense as an argument for renting instead of buying.
I am wondering, if you were to rent, would your landlord actually cover this? Sounds like that would be equally hard as claiming it on insurance or previous owner of house. I can imagine the response being something along "our janitor was qualified to clean it up and you shouldn't have called haz team" or simply that the leak wasn't their fault. On the other hand you can easily bail out and just rent another place, unless the queue to get a rental is 3years+ in your city.
I am wondering, if you were to rent, would your landlord actually cover this? Sounds like that would be equally hard as claiming it on insurance or previous owner of house. I can imagine the response being something along "our janitor was qualified to clean it up and you shouldn't have called haz team" or simply that the leak wasn't their fault. On the other hand you can easily bail out and just rent another place, unless the queue to get a rental is 3years+ in your city.