This book is written to assist those home owners who are presently involved / planning to get involved in the small claim process, either as plaintiff or as defendant, against the unethical remodeling contractors. Strategies and techniques are described in this book in clear, non-legal language so that you can plan your actions immediately without going through any lengthy learning process. As a plaintiff intending to seek damage recovery, you should read this book before starting your small claim process. As an innocent defendant, you should read this book to find out how you may effectively defend yourself against unreasonable claims made by the unethical contractor.
About the Author: The nightmare starts when you unfortunately pick a bad contractor for your home remodeling project. Let's face it - every contractor appears to be good at the beginning because they want your business. They don't change face until after the agreement is made... To many people, choosing a contractor is like placing a bet - it depends on luck and nothing else. The fact that most home owners have limited budgets while most small contractors have limited capacities tends to make it very difficult for the expectations to match. Why do you need to be so concerned about the small claim process? Because in most disputes that are related to home remodeling, the disputed amount is usually a part of the total lum sum (say, 10 20%), which would quite likely fit into the amount allowable in the small claim process. Small claim is relatively simple and cheap for settling disputes of such scale as the use of lawyers for presenting the case is disallowed. Disputes don't come up right from the start but take place after some works were done (that's when you see some results and start getting alarmed). You give warning and start withholding some payment, and the contractor threatens to stop works and sue you in court. Things turn ugly - your remodeling project comes to a halt and you are busy with the lawsuit. You get stuck. You want to launch an attack, or a counter attack if the bad contractor sues you first. You want to assess your position. You want to find out how things would work in the small claim process. This book is written basing on real world experience fighting bad contractors in the small claim court. The goal of writing this book is to share our experience with you. We want to tell you how we have protected ourselves from losses by deploying proper small claim tactics against unethical contractors. We want to let you know how you can achieve the same. Instead of going highly technical, we have written the book in such a way that it would be an easy-reading for you, that you can use the techniques right away for planning your small claim effort.