You hired the defendant to remodel your bathroom.
We found out he robbed a bank.
-[Patricia] Did he steal from you? -Yes.
He stole things from you, or are you saying he stole from you in this job here?
-In the job, yes. -[Patricia] Come on.
You see, you knew that's not where I was going with this.
You're starting to annoy me.
[announcer] Today on Tribunal Justice.
[theme music playing]
[announcer]This case was filed in Summerville, South Carolina.
Your Honors, this is case number 1141a and 41b
in the matter of M/L Scott versus Makosiej
and Mems versus Makosiej .
Parties have been sworn in. You may be seated.
All right, Mr. and Mrs. Scott, you hired the defendant to remodel your bathroom
and you allowed him to use your credit card,
in order to purchase the materials needed for that job.
You're claiming that the defendant made unauthorized purchases
with the card for $748.
That was the total.
That he failed to finish the job and that he did such shoddy work
that you had to hire another contractor to come in,
rip out what he did in your shower and redo it,
and you're suing in total for $6,954.
Now, Mr. Makosiej, you say that you owe the plaintiffs nothing.
According to your answer, you worked for over two months
and that you remodeled their bathroom exactly as they asked you to,
that the plaintiffs were happy with the results
and after the final payment was made,
that's when Mr. Scott said to you,
"Yeah, you know, I've been going over these hardware receipts
and it looks like that you bought materials
that weren't necessary for the job."
You, on the other hand, say that they were necessary for the job,
but that they would have continued use beyond the job.
I think one of the examples you made was, you know,
if you bought a box of nails or screws,
and they come in 100 in a box,
you will only use 20 or 30 on the job, the remainder you were taking with you.
And that's what your issue was.
Well, Your Honor, I would just like to interject.
The very first time he went to the hardware store,
he purchased kneepads, almost to the tune of $100.
I would think that those should be something
that would be reasonable and customary in a contractor's tool kit.
-[Adam] Okay. -[Lisa] There was a pattern.
Fifteen out of the 16 times that he went to the hardware store,
there were things identified on there that--
[Adam] You thought should've been in his toolbox.
-Should've been in his toolbox. -[Adam] And so,
according to the answer again, sir, that you are adamant
that you only purchased items that were needed for the remodel,
but you agreed to the plaintiff's request
because what the plaintiff said was, "Listen, it was unreasonable."
And you said, "I want to do what's right. I like you people,
and what are you looking for?"
And what they said was, "We want you to do a little side job around,
right, and we'll call it even."
And you said, "Yeah, listen, I did a big job.
I'm sorry you were upset about these little knick-knack things
that you are objecting to that should have been in my toolbox,
but I'll do the job." Is that right?
Yes.
[Adam] So when you contacted the defendant to do the job,
he came, he went through it with you,
provided you with a detailed estimate and said he can get started immediately,
and that he wouldn't be doing other jobs while he's working your job,
because you know what that means.
Means he comes one day, he's gone for ten, right?
The first day that he was supposed to be there for a full day,
I was supposed to meet him at Home Depot.
We had agreed to meet at 10:30, I believe it was.
It wasn't until almost 7:00 that evening. And I have texts, they're in the record.
"Oh, I'll be there, I'll be there."
[Adam] Okay, okay. So just let me stop and let me just dispel you
of this idea that you have in your head
that that's something I should take against this guy right here.
Because what you're saying is that, "You know, he was late,
he didn't show up when he was supposed to."
And you had a choice.
You're the one who controls, at this point,
whether or not he's going to continue working on the job,
or whether or not you're going to make a demand for your money back
and go somewhere else because you think that he's shady.
And despite what you just described
as him showing up late or not showing up at all for a day or so,
then you allowed him to continue on the job,
from what was a $6,700 estimate, to almost a $15,000 estimate.
So it couldn't have been so bad, right,
that you said, "I don't trust this guy, he's shady, you know, he's a scammer."
So the number one estimate that he provided
was for $6,700, correct?
-Yes. -Correct.
[Adam] And that was for a demo bathroom, subfloor repair,
new shower enclosure, and a bunch of other things including tile.
Explain to me, when you were going through that list, what you wanted done,
and you got to the shower, what did you tell him?
-Well-- -Because you had problems with it, right?
-We had issues with our shower, correct. -[Adam] Right.
The house is 20 years old. It was pulling away from the wall.
We told him we wanted that completely demoed, removed.
We had a Jacuzzi tub in the middle of the bathroom,
that we wanted that removed as well,
and that we wanted storage area built in there.
What did he tell you about what may occur once he gets into the demo?
When he looked at it, he said, "I can see there may be some floor sag."
And that's when he had mentioned that-- He said there may be some joist work,
and he said, "I'm going to put that into my contract bid."
And he put in a $500 amount.
[Adam] No, that's not true.
What he said was, "Due to the indication of floor sinking in front of shower pan,
extent of work to be completed is not known.
This will be discussed in detail after demo of shower and floor,
but will most likely consist of repairing or replacing
any floor joists and plywood that is rotted or otherwise damaged.
This price is subject to change." That's what he put in,
-and he put a $500 asterisk. -Correct. Correct.
-Yeah. -[Adam] So you knew,
instead of him saying nothing
and only then getting, after the demo is done,
what I refer to as an, "Oh, by the way, this is what I found."
That's what unscrupulous contractors do.
But what he did was give it to you straight up front.
This looks like it might be a bigger problem and if it is,
then we're going to have to talk about how bad of a problem,
because I don't know, until you, what,
-get into the walls, right? -Right.
-And you knew that, right? -[Lisa] We acknowledged that
and as soon as we had the floor and we're looking down at the ground...
[Adam] Oh, yeah, so let's get up... -...everything was--
...photo number four.
That's the demo, right? So after the demo, that's the way it looked.
[Lisa] That is correct, Your Honor.
[Adam] And what we see here is a completely rotted-out subfloor.
-Correct? -Correct.
And what we can also see here is the drain in the middle, right?
-[Lisa] Correct. -[Malcolm] Correct.
[Adam] And what we also see is the majority of the water damage
being in the back right, here, and going around this way by the wall.
-Correct. -[Adam] Okay.
Let's now please get photograph number one.
Okay, so this is after the full demo.
So the subfloor is off,
and you can now see all of the floor joists completely rotted out.
There's been years of water damage in that area, right?
[Brian] Correct, they were no longer connected to the rim joist.
[Adam] Right, and so they were, they were pulling apart
from the other joist, is that correct?
-Yes. -[Adam] Okay.
You see what the floor is looking like and he submits the final estimate
and I'm interested in what you agreed to as far as the final price.
-We agreed to the 65-- -[Lisa] We agreed to 65.
It was the 6500,
but it was a whole lot of other things that were associated with that,
and so the final amount was 14,950.
Okay, you know what, I'm going to pass this over to Judge Acker.
I'm sure she has lots of questions.
[announcer] Coming up on Tribunal Justice.
This is where I think they really start to get annoyed with you.
I mean, they submitted evidence... [laughs]
I originally thought it was funny, but, you know...
-Well, I mean-- -[Tanya] You submitted some evidence
of Brian's car spotted.
You found out he was lying about his location.
What were you all doing taking pictures of his car?
[theme music playing]
[announcer] Malcolm and Lisa Scott claim their former repairman, Brian Makosiej,
owes for unauthorized charges
and the cost to repair Brian's shoddy work on their bathroom.
Brian says he could have fixed the issues,
but Malcolm and Lisa sent him a no-trespass order.
[Tanya] I think that the issue that the plaintiffs are having
is that when you, like, accumulate all of these little things,
you know, the estimate changed
and then you're asking him for a ballpark and it's so hard to get a ballpark.
And then when you add up all those little expenses, it's almost $800.
I mean, that's real money.
So you started to get your back up a little bit.
According to the plaintiffs, they were going to call it even
if you did some extra work outside of the original scope of the project
-and you agreed to do that, correct? -Correct-- He--
He specifically said he didn't want money back, he just wanted...
[Tanya] No, they wanted you to do some work.
[Brian] ...us to do more work at their house.
-They wanted you to do some work. -[Brian] Correct.
And this is where I think things start to break down
-because you never came back to do that. -[Brian] Correct.
And why not?
I was swamped with work. We were in a car accident.
We had a couple of health issues. I had my daughter's college graduation.
-So, we just... -[Tanya] They became less important.
Rightly or wrongly,
because this is where I think they really start to get annoyed with you.
I mean, they submitted evidence... [laughs]
I originally thought it was funny, but...
-you know, you submitted some evidence... -Well, I mean--
...of, like, Brian's car spotted.
You found out he was lying about his location.
What were you all doing taking pictures of his car?
-Well, it's interesting... -Because he was down the road
at a job that he had bragged to me about getting.
That same day he was supposed to be at my house, finishing,
and honestly, I wasn't going to spy for his car.
I have a friend who lives two houses down from where his vehicle was.
[Tanya] And your friend was, like, "Your contractor is down the street."
Well, no, about three days, his wife had, I think it was either an MRI,
or tore her Achilles tendon, but he couldn't be there.
But that was a pattern, Your Honor.
It was a pattern where you felt like he was blowing you off
because, see, what really gets me, sir,
is after you acknowledge that you were going to do something
to remedy what they see as an overcharge.
So once you look at all these little things that have added up
and you say to them, you know what-- And they're even at this point
being really accommodating to you.
They're like, "You don't even have to give us that money back,
just finish up the work."
And you say, "Okay," and then in May, you don't come back.
In June, you don't come back. In July, you don't come back.
What else are they supposed to do except sue you in court?
They were pretty good clients.
Yeah, we were almost family when we were finished with their job.
[Tanya] And maybe you took them for granted.
Because, you know, I think that when people hire folks to do work
and the people who do the work say they're gonna do something and they don't do it,
then, you know, it doesn't make anybody an evil person, nobody died,
but they didn't get what they paid for and they didn't get what you represented
you were going to give them, so...
-May I add some color to this? -Could I just speak for a moment?
Quite frankly, we did not give him the business
because he had the lowest quote.
He did not have the lowest quote.
He represented himself as coming to South Carolina
to start a new life, to form a family business.
I saw that you actually submitted an ad.
"My son and I do home remodeling.
We won't take on anything that we know we can't do."
So you let them down, I mean, you let them down to some extent.
You-- When people are saying, "Can you come back?
Can you come back? Can you come back?"
and you've got college graduation.
But the exigencies of your life don't necessarily override
the obligations and the representations that you made to them.
Now, for the $5,000 that you're seeking for the cost of the new contractor...
-[Lisa] Yes. -...where are the things that you claim
the new contractor had to fix? What was broken?
I believe that there's video that's been submitted.
Can we play the video that the plaintiff's referring to, please?
[Malcolm on video] I've never been down here right after the shower itself,
has been taken by me. Look at the moisture on that sucker.
[Brian on video] Oh, I never saw this problem.
[Tanya] What is this?
[Malcolm] This is the shower that was ripped out.
-[Lisa] This the-- Yes. -[Tanya] After?
-[Lisa] This is after he built it... -[Tanya] After his work.
...it had to all be ripped up.
-[Tanya] Why'd they have to rip it up? -[Malcolm] It's all wet underneath.
[Lisa] It's all wet. Under our house.
-Leaking through our house. -[Tanya] Oh, my goodness.
When did you discover that you were having this leakage?
-How long after he finished the work? -July 30th, we discovered this.
What that video shows is them pulling up the tile,
along with the Kerdi shower pan,
and all the product in between, okay?
That was all waterproofed.
The waterproofing was on top of the shower pan.
-It was flood-tested to hold water. -Apparently not.
What happens sometimes is you do get settling
when you replace an entire subfloor.
South Carolina construction guidelines state that they prefer you to wait
minimum of 30 to 60 days to fix any grout or tiles cracking.
Let me respond to that, because--
And then I'm going to pass the case to Judge DiMango.
I think that you're offering this to explain why it looked like that.
But listen, if after two months you hadn't come back to do the extra work
that you already said you were gonna do,
I don't think it's fair to say to them, "Well, just wait,
don't take anything up, let the leaks settle as they will,
and then I'll be back in August."
I think that you'd already been a little disrespectful of your commitment to them.
Judge?
I always put a smile on when I hear contractor cases
because I have to tell you,
every plaintiff suing a contractor says the same thing,
and every contractor answers with the same reply.
And I think if you had to put a photograph of a person
underneath "Procrastinator, delays, blah blah blah,"
it would be a contractor's picture because that's what they do.
-[Lisa] Right. -[Patricia] Now, does that make it right?
No, it doesn't, but actually-- I don't know.
Have you had this other gentleman come in and do the work for you yet?
-Yes, ma'am. We had water... -Yes, we did.
...pouring through.
Why do you have so much water leaking in your house?
Well, I can tell you why it was leaking in this particular case,
because the new floor man had actually educated me on that.
One is that he'd used a red seal around all the walls.
[Patricia] I saw that, that was the photographs from
-the defendant or your new contractor? -[Malcolm] Correct.
This is from the defendant and he said he had put the waterproofing
all the way down on the floor.
-[Patricia] Yeah. -[Lisa] I don't see that.
And that's what he told us he was gonna do.
Sir, did you tell them that you were gonna cover the whole floor?
Because that's what you kind of testified to in here.
-Yes, we waterproofed the shower pan. -No.
-[Brian] That the tile went on top of. -Wouldn't it be that nice red paint
that would've been on it?
-I don't see that on the whole floor. -[Makosiej] Yeah, it was after--
It was after that, we didn't get a picture of that.
[Patricia] Well, I think you would have taken a completed picture then,
one where you stopped.
[Brian] Well, what do I have to gain by not doing it?
-It takes two minutes to do it. -[Patricia] Oh, you know what,
if I could answer those questions, I'd probably be a multi-millionaire.
I don't know why people don't do...
As meticulously we did everything else,
why would I not waterproof the shower pan...
-[Patricia] I don't know. -...and flood-test it?
All it takes is one little crack.
I can't answer the question you're asking me
-because I don't do your work. -[Brian] All right.
[announcer] Coming up on Tribunal Justice.
We found out he'd been arrested for robbing a bank.
This is a man I just had in my home.
Did he steal from you?
-Yes. -He went and took your jewelry?
-He stole things from you? -[Lisa] No.
Or are you saying he stole from you in this job here?
In the job, yes.
Come on. You see, you knew that's not where I was going with this.
[theme music playing]
Now, the problem is
that when you become picayune, you know, you lose credibility.
And I looked through the list, and I have to be honest with you,
I almost laughed when you picked out the kneepads.
'Cause I started looking through the list
and I started getting a little crazy with it
and then I just kind of said, "Kneepads? Why doesn't he have kneepads?"
So I know what your position is.
Your position is, "He was building his business inventory
-on our dime." -Yes.
[Patricia] That's what your position is.
Now, you're just coming here from another state.
You are only here a month.
How did you get to South Carolina?
My in-laws had moved down about ten years ago,
and they were trying to get us to move down.
[Patricia] Did you drive, did you fly? What did you do?
Oh, we drove.
You drove one car? You drove a truck? How'd you get down there?
-I think we took two trucks. -[Patricia] What do you mean, "you think"?
You don't know who's in the car with you? How'd you get there?
Come on, see, now when you play like that...
It's like when they're telling you, what are you going to do with 900 screws?
How did you get there?
-Because I think you know where I'm going. -We drove.
You didn't start a business.
You didn't bring anything with you. That's their point.
So basically you were buying your things to use in your business.
-Well, we had been here a year already. -[Patricia] Yeah, now!
But that's not when you put that ad in and they called you.
You were there a month.
But the truth is, you should have had some of these things.
It's $100, but they don't want to pay for it, they shouldn't have to pay for it.
-[Malcolm] Your Honor... -[Lisa] Your Honor, I found out
he misrepresented his name to us.
He told us his name was Brian Joseph.
Then when he's in his car accident, he sends me the insurance report
and a copy of his doctor's note with his last name.
[Patricia] Is this all after the incident?
-Yes. -This is after
when we're still trying to get him back
-into our house to finish work. -[Patricia] But it's after, okay, okay.
-[Lisa] And we found out-- -[Patricia] Go on.
We found out he robbed a bank.
We found out he had been arrested in New York, where he lived,
for robbing a bank.
This is a man I've just had in my home.
-Walking through my bedroom. -First of all, I--
I will ask him about that, but I don't think,
you know, people come over and they knock on your door and they say, "By the way,
I'm Jim Smith, aka Tom Jones, and I'm a bank robber."
-So can I come in and stay there?" -[Lisa] Right, but they don't give a name?
[Patricia] He's not gonna tell you that. Did he steal from you?
Yes. [laughing] He stole from us.
He went and took your jewelry?
-[Patricia] He stole things from you... -No, no.
...or you're saying he stole from you in this job here?
-In the job, yeah. -Come on,
you see, you knew that's not where I was going with this.
-Why do you need to do that? -[Lisa] No.
[Patricia] You're starting to annoy me.
So back to you.
-I don't know if you have a felony record. -No.
But I don't have any evidence of it one way or another,
nor have I looked for it.
-Can I explain? -[Patricia] You wanna explain?
Yeah, I'd like to hear something, go on.
I had an addiction problem back in New York...
-[Patricia] Okay. -...that culminated with me
walking into a bank and handing them a note.
I had hit rock bottom. It was the worst point in my life.
-Um... -How long ago was this, sir?
-Uh, about six years ago. -[Patricia] Okay.
I've been clean ever since and it just-- It got real difficult in New York
-to continue getting work. -Mm-hmm.
So moving down here where the in-laws were
seemed like a good place to get a fresh start.
I don't disagree with you on that
and I'm going to say that based on my perception
and having spent 40 years doing criminal cases,
I don't get the sense-- Who's laughing at 40 years?
-[laughter] -She started when she was five.
-She was a prodigy. -Thank you!
[laughter continues]
[Patricia]You seem like you've done well by yourself and you're on a good path.
So the bottom line is,
I don't know whether this issue here pre-existed the house
or what the deal was with that, but clearly,
it seems that there was some issue
-with the bottom, underneath the shower. -The shower pan.
So, just in looking back at what you're asking for here,
you are purchasing tools without our consent.
I mean, he's not gonna call you for ev--
"You know what, I need a Phillips head, I only have a flathead screwdriver."
-He's not gonna call you for all of that. -Mm-hmm.
[Patricia] And it's not like you're talking thousands and thousands,
you're talking $748 for things that,
though he might not have used in their entirety or totality,
he did use on the job.
I'm just putting it out there, this is how my thinking is.
Can I just ask why it went from 400, in the texts that we had
up until the point that they filed the suit, to 750?
If you initially, in the texts as you did, requested 400 some odd dollars,
-why would you now... -Because we hadn't been through
-all the receipts. -[Patricia] They went through it...
-[Malcolm] We went through every receipt. -...with a fine-tooth comb.
You don't get that yet?
[laughter]
Now, you're talking about the non-completion of the work.
Is that what you're saying that it would have cost
for the new guy to rip up the floor and do it back?
What's the 1,000 for?
The 1,000 was, he never took the old glass from the original shower.
He had agreed to remove that glass that had been sitting out on our back shower.
Every day I would say, "Brian, we need that gone, we need that gone."
Just to stop the requests, why didn't you do it?
I don't know, we were just trying to finish the work at that point
[Patricia] And the new guy at $5200,
-he took everything apart? -No.
No, the 5200 includes the 2200
we paid to the new contractor, plus what we had paid to Brian for the shower floor.
[Patricia] I don't have any other questions.
[Adam] I do.
So, just so we're clear then, the contract with the new contractor
-was in fact only $2,200. -Yes, sir, yes.
[Adam] Okay, I wanna go back to that video, please,
because that was pretty important.
This video that was taken,
you knew that you were going to hire the guy who you brought.
We had not made a decision at that point.
[Adam] But you knew it was gonna get done.
Yes, I mean, it had been two months and nothing came back from Brian.
You know, when you look at the finances, we paid him $1,000
to get rid of all that demolition stuff,
and part of that is that, okay, I'm ending up buying his contracting back,
yet I paid $1,000 for that to go.
You gave him a no-trespass order.
You went to the police.
You got an order that prohibited him from coming back on your property, right?
Okay, so then in your complaint though,
what you say is, "August 1st, Brian texted us that he was on muscle relaxers,
so he couldn't come. We no longer wanted him in the house.
This forced us to hire a new contractor
that we not only had to pay to finish the job,
but also pay to redo what he already did."
So that's what you said.
In your complaint, you want us to believe that he has this criminal record
that you didn't know about, you found out about it,
and now you're so concerned that he's taking these muscle relaxers,
you can't trust him anymore, and that is what-- Hold on.
"This forced us to hire a new contractor."
-[Lisa] It was-- -So we can already agree
that what you put in your complaint was inaccurate.
[announcer] To be continued...
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