What does it take, in the state of VT, to make a general contractor responsible for his work?
How do you make him liable for major mistakes, some of them voluntary, some of them due to ignorance?
My family and I sent over 30K to rebuild a foundation around the house. The floor slab 28’ x 42’ does not contain a single re-bar. After a year after been poured, it has more than 100 linear feet of cracks. The leveling has been done by eye. There are offsets of several inches throughout the slab.
The main retaining wall has vertical re-bars one every five or six feet and it already cracked in several places.
Needles to ask to find a concrete wall that is plumb or strait or that it is squared with the others. The concrete while poured was not vibrated so you can see air gaps on all four walls and when it rains outside, it leaks inside.
The list goes on.
The only option presented to me was to take him to court. It would take about a year to have the case heard; it would have taken several thousands of dollars just in legal fees, plus all the additional aggravation.
I understand that this particular contractor is involved in a number of lawsuits.
Why a contractor such as the one I am referring to is still allowed to build? Why it is not there a regulatory body that would oversee complains against contractors, inspect the buildings in question and force the contractor to redo everything at his expense and in the shortest of possible times?
Many other States have a regulatory body that protects the public from bad contractors.
What are we doing about this?

If you can prove fraudulent activity than he will have to pay the court costs and lawyers fees. That's what I would be checking into.

I am in the same situation as you. We hired a contractor and didn't sign a contract. We already paid him and his work is not to code nor doe it look even a little bit attractive. Cost us $7,000.

Anyway, here is a link you might be interested in. http://consumer.courttv.findlaw.com/litigation_appeals/
Look around the site a bit. There is a page that tells about how to collect once you've won and which states require licenses. It helped me to decide whether or not I was going to take this guy to court. By the way I am definately taking him to court and I am going to try to prove fraudulence.

In my opinion the fact that there is no rebar in your concrete is fraud. He obviously either doesn't know what he is doing and he misrepresented himself by taking the job in the first place or he knew better and committed fraud by decieving you into thinking he was doing it right and according to code.

Guys like these need to be stopped. We work too hard for our money only for some jerk to rob us of it like this.

Good luck and I hope you get what you have coming to you. Please visit that site. It might make a difference, you never know.



[This message has been edited by Fredrika (edited 05-12-2005).]