On 3/5/2012 9:19 AM, Sam Takoy wrote:
Hi,

Our kitchen cabinets were built by a local cabinet maker. We live in a
Philadelphia suburb, the cabinet make lives in Bucks County. The
cabinets are of unacceptably poor quality. Examples include out-of-
square boxes, sloppy reveals, poorly mortised hinges (sloppy and
hinges are not flush with the wood), handles not at the same height,
gaps in joints, warped doors, damage in the finish, wobbly and crooked
drawers, tear outs in the veneer and many more.

We have obviously made a number of mistakes, the biggest being in
judgment of character and background checks. These mistakes led to
other mistakes, like paying the full amount when we were informed that
the cabinet maker ran out of money and wouldn't be able to continue
working on our project unless we paid. We were in a tough spot having
worked on the kitchen for three years and feeling the need to bring
this project to an end.

However, all of that is in the past. At this point, what recourse, if
any, do we have? Can one bring a law suit based on "low quality" -
that is, is the an objective measure of quality that the court could
base its decision on?

I would welcome any ideas on how to proceed. Or should we just
recognize that we made a $25k mistake and move on?

Many thanks in advance.

Sam

Can't believe that cabinets alone were $25 k and it sounds like you must
have put them in yourself since it was a three year period.

I can't comment on your specific case but had the experience of suing my
home builder many years ago.

I sued him personally along with his corporation and it cost me a
retainer with the lawyer and a professional inspectors report.

Lawyer advised me that we were unlikely to win against the builder
himself but would probably win against the corporation but find it had
no assets. So we settled out of court against the corporation but never
got a penny as the corporation was broke. Developers are expert in
hiding behind corporations and will often incorporate a single project
to protect their others. Only money I got back was in the form of
writing it off my taxes as a short term business loss or something.

I did get some satisfaction with the county withholding building permits
until he corrected things that were out of code. I did not need a
lawyer for this.

Besides getting no money there was the aggravation of going through this
for nearly a year and a counter suit because my wife had chased away
buyers of the house next door.

Someone else brought up the potential for a lien. My builder had built
a house for a banker and was getting cash advances and showing him
releases of liens. Turns out he was not paying his subcontractors and
forging the release of liens. Don't know what the banker's lawyer
worked out but he advised the banker that it was better to get the mess
straightened out than to put the builder in jail.