r/TheSmallVictories • u/Klutzy_Dog669 • 2d ago
A small victory that hopefully leads to a bigger one
This year has been sh** for myself and my husband. We had a house fire on January 20th, and we are STILL dealing with insurance. We had purchased a new one, but had not finished moving out of the old one. Now, instead of cleaning it up and selling it off, we've been stuck with two mortgages for the past 8 months.
Part of what was lost in that fire was live fish. I had several aquariums and I was trying to breed the fish to become a supplier to wholesalers. I went from 56 tanks to about 9 or so, and lost a lot of expensive fish as well. Because of it, I've lost my heart in the idea and plans, and I'm shutting everything down.
And then there's another issue that has been going on for a few years. We paid to have our master bathroom remodeled way back in 2021. It was a complete gutting and rebuild. We combined a little tiny hallway, a HUGE walk-in closet, and the existing tiny bathroom to make one big bathroom. It was 9 foot by 15 feet, so it was massive for a bathroom. But the contractor screwed some things up. We've been fighting with them since then. But in late 2022 I found out they weren't licensed - despite them telling me otherwise. I thought I had to drive all the way up to the government offices in the big town north of here to verify the license, but figured I would just see it at some point during the course of the project, so I didn't make the drive. I never saw one in an office or anything. In late 2022 I found an online search feature and found out they had lied to me - they weren't licensed.
In March 2023, after lots of research into the company, HOPING to find a good reason they weren't licensed that could explain everything away, I finally decided to contact them about it. I gave them the list of things they had not addressed and told them I knew they weren't licensed. I said that since they weren't, they were no longer allowed to step foot on my property. They also had no "right to repair" their crappy work, but the law still allowed *me* to enforce my side of the contract, meaning they were still liable for it. That means they had to pay a legally licensed contractor to repair or correct their work.
Obviously, they refused.
Been waiting on them to at least SAY something since then. They haven't said anything. I finally filed for a motion for summary judgment since they lacked the right to enforce any part of the contract as UNlicensed contractors. They kept trying to argue that I didn't give them a chance to fix these problems (they had plenty of a chance BEFORE I found out they were unlicensed) and making excuses about what they were supposed to do. For example, they were supposed to paint a wall where they removed a door, and the wall was in my "fish room" in the house. They claimed they were never supposed to paint that wall. The contractor actually put this in a sworn affidavit, submitted to the court.
But thanks to the other issues I've mentioned above, I also lost a lot of files on my computer. I've been trying to recover them from the hard drive all year.
Enter the little victory. I finally recovered some VERY important ones. The files included the photos of what they screwed up, and the text message history between myself and the owner, as well as myself and the owner's spouse, about different aspects of the project. The text message history has a part that I admitted in court - that one day I told them not to worry about the fish room wall because I was going to paint the room a different color soon anyway, and the next day I said never mind, please do paint it because the wall needed protection from splashing water until I got around to painting the entire room.
There is a clear response from the contractor saying okay, they'll make sure they get it taken care of!
Right there in black and white! And a water mark on the paper to keep anyone from editing it!
There are messages showing I repeatedly asked them to call for the plumber to come finish, for a full six months after he told me "have them put me on the schedule for next week, my schedule is open all week." They ignored it the entire time. I also had a record of me bringing up other things to them during the course of the project, that were never taken care of, or finished.
But finding these records wasn't the only small victory. We are less than 30 days away from another hearing. So I had to file what's called a Motion for Leave to Submit Additional Evidence in order to send that to the court this late, and hope it gets approved. AND THEY APPROVED IT!
I know I shouldn't count my eggs before they hatch, but this evidence shows not only that they are at fault, and responsible for many problems, but that they lied in sworn affidavits to the court, and committed perjury. They have been trying so hard to call up a bunch of things that make them look good, and this pretty much stomps all of it.
They also gave the opposing counsel a chance to object to the evidence and she did not. I'm not sure she would have a valid reason, because she received the files as part of her request for discover in the beginning. Only my files were affected, and only this year, which prevented me from submitting them to the court itself. But ALSO, since she responded that she did not object, she can't object to it at the hearing either. I am feeling confident again. It's bad enough I have to represent myself (pro se) because the contractor played a little game to get other attorneys in the area to deny me (another story, another time). But my confidence in this case is finally up where it should be.
