Homeowners spend years suffering and incurring exorbitant legal expenses to bring shoddy, fraudulent contractor to justice and may now lose it all to one final legal maneuver
In or about April, I began soliciting bids from home improvement contractors for addition and renovation work we needed to have done at our house to accommodate the move-in of my elderly parents. Among the interested bidders was the defendant, John Kennedy Serven d/b/a Serven Construction Company (Serven).
I explained to Serven that I had a very finite budget for the project and was not in a position to pay anymore than $40,000.00. Serven told me that he could do the project for that price and that under no circumstances would the project go over budget. Serven also promised a completion date of no later than five to six weeks from commencement of the work. Having not heard of Serven, I performed a search of home improvement contractors on the Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation's website. It was at that time that I uncovered that there had been a prior homeowner claim against Serven, which was paid out of the state's Guaranty Fund (see Exhibit A). When I confronted Serven about this claim he told me that it was all a mistake and that no claim had ever been filed against him. He also told me that he had already contacted the Attorney General's Office and they agreed to correct the error. The next week, the warning was off the website, so I believed him. I later learned that the claim was not a mistake. I don't know how he had the posting removed.
In reliance on Serven's representations, I agreed to enter into a home improvement contract. However, when it came time to prepare the contract specifications, Serven told me that he could not do the project for $40,000.00 as promised and instead needed $50,000.00. Around that time, Serven also told me that I would need to pay an architect he knew to prepare the plans for the project and assured me that his friend's fees would not exceed $500.00. Considering the fact that all the other contractors would not be able to start for several months, I gave into Serven's demands and on November 11, accepted Serven's home improvement proposal.
After the plans were finally prepared, Serven's architect friend told me the bill for his services would not be $500.00 as Serven had promised, but rather $2,800.00 provided I pay in cash. I contested the charges but ultimately agreed to pay the fees after being told that there's a lot of engineering involved and, so that the project could finally get started. Months later I discovered that the plans I received from the architect were not even stamped with his seal. 6 years later, I learned through my attorney's investigation that Mike Lutrzykowski is not actually an architect! Although he is employed with the Architect firm whose name was printed on the binder he carried, he only draws plans for them.
Serven finally commenced work in December, but only after demanding a deposit in the amount of $18,000.00, which represented 36% of the total contract price. I later learned that under Massachusetts law he was prohibited from asking for a deposit in excess of one-third of the contract price.in the months that followed, Serven continued to drive-up the contract price by charging my husband and I for labor and materials clearly included in the contract documents. For instance, when it came time for the roofing and electrical work Serven insisted that we make direct payments to his subcontractors. When we resisted, Serven insisted that the work was not part of the contract and threatened to shut down the project. We ultimately paid Serven's subcontractors under protest only to have them perform their work in a completely substandard manner and/or quit and remove materials I paid for from the job site. Lastly, when it came time to purchase ceramic tiles and other contract materials, Serven asked me to put these items on my credit card and then refused reimbursement.
At times when Serven did not send me out to buy materials for the project, he came back with inferior products that often were mismatched. When I objected and repurchased the appropriate materials, Serven refused to install them and claimed, they would violate the building code. He also threatened to run me over with his truck. Months later, the Building Inspector for Beverly informed me that Serven's statement about the building code was entirely false.in other instances, Serven, of his own accord, performed work he thought would improve the flow of our house. Serven initially told us he was performing this work at no charge. He later recanted and demanded payment for this purported extra work. Since we were on a fixed budget, there was no way that my husband and I would have let Serven perform this work if we knew this would increase the contract price.
By May the project was a complete disaster. Serven's failure to pay and supervise the subcontractors on the project caused many of the subtrades to walk off the project or to remove materials from the job site. Serven left it to my husband and I to find replacement subtrades and to repurchase the stolen materials.By this point, Serven stopped showing up to the job site. It was around this time that my husband started noticing incomplete and defective work caused by Serven's negligence. When we demanded that he return and fix these items and complete the project, Serven simply assured us that all his work complied with the Massachusetts Building Code, a statement we later learned to be false.
Between March and June I placed countless calls to Serven's cell phone pleading with him to address the problems at the job-site and to finish the contract work. Weeks went by without a response. Serven finally called back to irately explain that he had a death in his family. Later his excuse became that he lost his cell phone. Eventually he stopped calling me back and completely abandoned the project in June.By this point, Serven had demanded and received contract payments totaling $45,948.00, exclusive of the $11,105.00 in labor and material charges my husband and I directly paid to other subcontractors and suppliers. It is difficult to describe the horrific state in which Serven left our home. Major items of electrical, plumbing, and HVAC work were never performed. Closets, doors, moldings, and carpet also went uninstalled. Among other defects, the upstairs bathroom was a complete mess. The floors and walls were not level resulting in faulty installation of the tub, tile, toilet, and windows. He bored holes in the floor joists so large that it's unsafe to use my tub. The stairs leading to the upstairs also illustrates the workmanship common throughout the house. Aside from being left in an unfinished state, major design flaws and building code violations made them unsafe for our use. Serven defended his workmanship in court by stating the stairs were only a glorified ladder, therefore it was okay to have the steps all different lengths and widths! He also claimed to have cantilevered the stairs. After visual inspection, our construction consultant verified there is no cantilevering. The exterior of the house was in no better shape. The siding was left buckled, the soffits are not aligned with the roof, allowing birds and insects to come and go freely, and the roof lacked an ice and water shield.
In or about August I hired a construction consultant to review the damages to my house. He confirmed that much of the work performed by Serven was substandard, unsafe, and in many instances, violated the Massachusetts Building Code. The cost of repairing the defective items of work and completing the project was estimated to be $125,750.00. On November 7, my attorney made demand on Serven's general liability insurer, The Hingham Group.in response to said demand, The Hingham Group denied coverage under Serven's policy and declined to make any offer of settlement.
In court, Mr. Serven told several different versions of the events. He lied about things there didn't seem to be any reason not to admit to the truth about. For example, when asked why he did not shingle the back porch roof, he insisted that the back porch was added after his job was completed. He walked in and out of the enclosed porch several times a day for months. We submitted photos of the porches from 4 decades, as well as during the project, to the court as evidence. He testified to at least 4 different lengths of cantilever on my stairs before we broke through the ceilings and took photos as evidence there was none. He said he finished all work and left our home in good condition. We had to hire a dumpster to remove all the trash and had to do all the repair and finish work on the job ourselves! He even called the building inspector as a witness in court. The building inspector confirmed our assertions that our home had multiple building code violations and that he had refused to sign off on the final inspection as a result.
We refinanced several times, borrowed from family and used every bit of equity in our home and every bit of credit card limit we could get to bring our home to a cosmetically livable situation and pay our legal expenses. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough. We now live in a home that does not meet building code and that we can not sell. We can't use our bathtub, can't sell our home, and owe approximately $60,000 to our attorneys. We had to evict my mother from her apartment last year, because we needed the rent money to pay our construction consultants and to help pay our inflated mortgage. We struggle to pay that mortgage and are late with it every month. Despite having proved our case to a jury and having a judgment in excess of $180,000 including part of our attorney's fees and interest, we may never have our home back. Mr. Serven has filed for bankruptcy and if it's granted will walk away without having to pay a cent for his bad acts. It feels like we've gone through 7 years of hell for nothing.
A few days AFTER we were granted a real estate attachment, but before the sheriff actually filed it, Mr. Serven lied on a mortgage application, fraudulently stating that we was not a party to a lawsuit that had been ongoing for many months, and successfully drained the majority of the equity in the home that we had already attached. The worst part of this story is that for all these years, he has gone on to other victims. A check of the local courts shows that he had other legal claims against him when he told me his record was clear and that other claims have been hired since. I can't help but think that one day; his customers' luck is going to run out and someone his going to be seriously hurt due to his shoddy workmanship.
Serven's website, http://www.servenconstruction.com proclaims I will make sure your home or business has the highest quality of construction from start to finish. My home doesn't even meet building code. My windows are mismatched, and my siding is buckled and droops on warm days. Water, birds and insects fly in and out of my soffits. My stairs could fall at any time and my floor joists are swiss cheese'. It also states Our mission is to provide our clients with excellent quality and workmanship, done on schedule and within the parameters of your budget. I paid more than 125% of my budget to Serven and his contractors, he walked off the job after the schedule was more than doubled and with only about 25% of the work completed.
In addition, he states Our reputation for exceptional quality and customer service propelled our businessOur project expertise is nothing less than perfecthighest quality workon each and every projectpermanent records kept of job details for future customer reference. He had only a few records for production at our trial, and most of what he produced was clearly related to other jobs. For example, in invoice for kitchen cabinets measured at 14 Griffin Terrace, his home address, and concrete poured in Revere. When asked under oath if he poured concrete at our home, he stated that he wasn't sure. This was a 3rd floor dormer addition! When our attorney showed him that the receipt clearly stated the address of the concrete pour in Revere, he did not explain why he submitted the receipt as documentation of our project. Finally, his web page advertises Quality is not expensive, it's priceless! I agree with that, but looking at my home, I don't see any quality work, only a nightmare that hasn't ended for 7 years and I know that we will never awaken from.
After 6 years of legal wrangling on the part of Mr. Serven, we finally had our day in court, actually 4 of them, in front of a jury. The jury agreed with us after seeing only a small part of our evidence, and we were finally awarded damages. Not enough to make us whole, but at least enough to get our home repaired after all these years. We thought our court dates were over. However, on April 21, at Room 225-B of the Thomas P. O'Neill Federal Building, we will have to plead our case to a Judge again. Mr. Serven has filed for bankruptcy protection and if he is approved, we will never have a chance to recover a penny for all the pain and suffering, not to mention financial loss we have experienced.
We feel that by sharing our story, others may avoid the pain we have experienced. This is the only thing that will make living in this hell worthwhile. Mr. Serven claimed that he knew nothing of building code while under oath. His sworn testimony was that his Construction Supervisor's license was just given to him. He didn't have to do anything to get it. I have heard many stories from other homeowners about how they were ripped off by contractors who left their homes a disaster. Something needs to be done and people need a place to turn to. Contractors shouldn't be allowed to destroy what is most people's most important asset without regulation and accountability! When our jury was selected, several potential jurors were excused because their own experiences with contractors who did similar things to them and their families made them feel that they could not be objective. One man stated that he would have sued his former contractor, but knew that it would only result in more expense and no satisfaction for him. Unfortunately, this is the result in the majority of cases.
When Mr. Serven first abandoned our home, I searched for help. The Building Inspector advised me to have my attorney contact him. I searched for other assistance, but the only thing I found were the names of attorneys. As a result, we have spent more than $100,000 pursuing justice and he may just walk away without being held accountable. I want others to have more options than we did.
Thank you for allowing us to share our story with you.
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