[quote=Russell]O.K Piggs, excuse the interruption please…
Ucgal,
Hopefully you have some good ideas or perhaps the attorney can provide some.Maybe you could hire an appraiser to calculate the value the contractor provided vs. the money paid. No matter what course of action you take you are probably going to need to establish a basis with a third party.I think and insurance appraiser or a contractor who normally works with insurance providers could do this. In your shoes I might try this and send it to the person and his insurer with a demand in an attempt to get the paper trail you will need established. Maybe you did all this already? As you probably know it will really come down to leverage against any means the contractor has to remedy the inequity.
I know some people you could call if you need to establish value. If they can’t help you I think they will point you in the right direction. I can give you or your husband an email if you want to discuss it off line. You probably have a handle on it, but just in case, I have some experience here.I am not looking for work. I don’t don’t get involved in these settlements professionally. I came by this experience by beign in a similar situation to yours and I know how helpless of an experience it felt like at first.
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piggs – please forgive the continued interruption.
Russell – when the contractor abandoned the job (or started his serious threats to shake us down and walk)… we contacted a lawyer. We have until August to file against the thief. In the meantime we finished the project with a different GC. Per our attorney, our losses include the *actual* costs to finish the job, not just the cost remaining on the original contract. This makes sense because we had a hard time finding any contractor willing to take on a project started by someone else… for liability/warranty reasons. So the cost to complete was almost as high as the original contract price – despite being through the expensive grading and retaining walls. (Gotta love hillside development.)
We have several basis points for determining what state the original contractor left things. The new contractor clearly specified what he wasn’t responsible for. (To cover his liability/warranty). We also brought in the city inspectors. And we had our third party engineers (geotechnical, structural, and special inspector.) So there were lots of points of reference of the state of things at time of abandonment.
Additionally the investigator from the CSLB has all this documentation and reached a determination of damages at the point of abandonment (more than $100k). As did his bond company when they determined damages. (Again, more than $100k.)
The only reason we wouldn’t go after this guy is that he may not have any assets to recover. His corporation’s assets consist of a PDA, leased truck, computer, fax/copier. If we can go after his personal assets (might be able to under RICO since we’re not his only victim) his house in Carlsbad is nice… but he’s behind on taxes on it AND paid a lot more for it than it’s currently worth. I suspect he’s underwater, bigtime. Plus he just paid a *large* settlement last year to another ripoff victim. (I don’t know the exact figure, but I know approx what the damages were and the homeowner was happy with the settlement… not trivial money – more than our damages).
We have to decide if going after him is throwing more good money after bad.
In the meantime, our companion unit is finished, my in-laws are living in it. All of that is very good. It just sucks to get ripped off in a major way.
