Great case on People's Court today.

Brand new apartment building, 5 floors, 20 apartments, the one involved
is $1.2 miillion dollars, 2000 sq.ft, 2 bedrooms and office.

General contractor hires painting contractor, painting contractor has
his employees painting the outside and the halls, and doesn't have
enough painters so he hires more, including plaintiff. Plaintiff is
hired off of CraigsList. In the words of the judge, just like us
shlubs would.

Painter does a bad job, lot of pictures of runs, overpaint, painting
over bad window caulking (does the painter do the caulking too in this
situation?), etc, judge agrees.

Defendant said it's common practice, and that he has 4 other crews in
the same building. But he never makes clear if it's just that the other
crews are subs, or that they also came from craigslist.

So, is it common practice for decent painters to hire help from
craigslist?

And aren't there "deficiencies" that can't really be repaired? Mistakes
that absolutely shouldn't have been made. I can't think of any right
now but I think I've seen them.

Most of you won't build your own apartment building, but if you
remodeled or put on an addition and you had a general contractor who
hired a painting contractor who hired a new guy from craigslist, would
you be ticked off?



(The painting contractor said he just wanted him to fix the deficiencies
and he'd get paid, but the sub refused to go back and sued. The judge
points oout that the unpaid sub can, at least until the court case was
heard, file a lien and muck up sales and make everyone look bad. And
what buyer won't expect a discount when he hears the first paint job was
so bad, the painter wasn't paid?)