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[liteningme]

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[jinkies]

With that much money on the line, I would consider scheduling a consultation with a lawyer. I think this could be difficult to navigate on your own, depending on the exact terms of your written contract. The excerpt that you shared does not seem to protect you as the consumer at all.

Do you have photos/documentation of the things that they ruined or messed up? Did you discuss these problems and solutions in writing (text or email) or mostly verbally?

[cville]

That contact is unhinged. You should speak to a lawyer. You want someone who is an expert in construction law.

Your state's bar association probably has a website where you can search lawyers who are in different "sections" or "divisions" (these are just like subcommittees, you just pay to participate) and then when you find a few in your area, you can Google them and see who looks good. 99% of lawyers have a web presence of some sort. The ones who don't are probably sole practitioners >65.

[penguingrrl]

I would absolutely hire a lawyer to guide you through this. There’s a lot of money in the line. It’s also likely that the errors they’ve made will allow you to get out of their contract as long as you have evidence of them happening.

[tealblue]

I agree that you need a lawyer to navigate this and potentially to medicate their errors. Sorry you are going through this, home renovations are stressful in the best situations.

[7costanza]

I would get a lawyer. We had similar issues with a deck contractor, much smaller amount but still significant to us, and it was a total nightmare to deal with. We ended up letting them finish the job, but I wish we had hired an attorney and found a new contractor as the deck still has a lot of (aesthetic) issues.

[ellipses84]

That is concerning language in the contract. I would contact an attorney. There may be state laws preventing them from enforcing a contract like that. Future profits could be everything you owe them… so like if the contract said they get 6% overhead on $200k that could be $12k, even if they’ve only completed $20k of work. Plus they may charge you for any material they’ve ordered, if it’s non-refundable or restocking fees if it’s not. Non-refundable materials should be delivered to you. They could argue you owe them the full $200k. How their subcontractor agreements are worded could impact this.

This can get extremely messy. Sometimes a soft approach is best, like see if they’ll be willing to amend an agreement to walk away knowing the relationship isn’t going well, rather than jumping to threatening legal action. However, an attorney should be advising you every step of the way.

[wanderingback]

My first piece of advice would definitely run run run now. We dealt with an incompetent contractor and my partner dealt with everything and a million CTJ but it got to the point where he just wanted him to finish once we were already deep in. 18 months later we finally got a lawyer and fired him. Our project was only for about 40k so since your is much higher I would definitely talk to a lawyer. I can’t tell, how much have you already paid?

Thankfully our contractor (stupidly) took credit cards so my partner put it all on his Amex business card cause some of the work was related to his studio and Amex reversed all the charges and gave us our money back because my partner had documented all the conversations and fuck ups and CTJ talks he had with him.

We did also sue the contractor. The case was dropped because our lawyer had a family emergency and moved out of the state and we decided not to pursue it with another lawyer since we did get our money back. But our contractor was so bad that I just wanted him to go out of business so no one else ever had to deal with him.

Anyway, best of luck and definitely cut your loses now and consult with a lawyer.

[mae0111]

I've been through something similar and I agree that you should contact a lawyer. We ended up having to do that and it took 3 years and a failed mediation to get a judgment, and even then, we only got back a fraction of what we were owed. We had worked with the contractor several times before, but after we signed with him and he started demo, it became apparent to me that his addiction issues were coming back. He had no assets, he ignored all summonses, he never responded or appeared for mediation or eventually court.

In our state, there is a fund set up to recoup losses from unscrupulous contractors, but it only allows for $10K. We had paid him more than that, and then pad to pay double out of pocket to correct (example - we paid him to get a dumpster, he never got one, so we had to pay again for a dumpster... that happened several times...). Then the state pulled his contractor license until he can pay the lien. Maybe your state has something similar if you can't resolve it with the contractor directly?