Soon after paying Brian Darnell close to $10,000 to perform construction repairs and upgrades on our residential home we became concerned about the conduct exhibited by the general contractor. After the first few email communications Darnell was trying to dictate what we were to do, referencing sections of the contract that supposedly compelled us to do as he wished and stating flat out that to not do as he wanted was a breach of contract.
We were surprised by such poor treatment from a general contractor we had hired and paid to perform residential construction services. We sought the advice from a lawyer about our options but were told that there was no law against him being a jerk. With Brian Darnell we had stumbled onto our own Tar-Baby – a “sticky situation” that is only aggravated by additional involvement with it.
We would find out later that the “contract” Brian Darnell was using violated multiple Missouri business practice laws. Unfortunately at the time we were unaware of this, though given the general contractor’s conduct it was not likely to have not mattered to him anyhow had we brought the matter up.
When Brian Darnell had proposed doing the work on our roof he had stated that we would not have any out-of-pocket expenses. Later he would renege on this promise, but what we did not realize at the time is that it is against the law for a general contractor to make such an statement.
Darnell supplied us with a repair estimate to then provide to our Insurance Company so that they would provide payment. We were surprised at the cost to replace the shingles on our roof, nearly $20,000 according to Darnell’s estimate. We were concerned that in order to have us not pay any out-of-pocket expenses, Darnell was grossly overstating the cost of the repairs, to have extra cash with which to reimburse us.
We told Darnell that we expected all the work on the repair estimate that we had sent to the Insurance Company to be performed – Darnell’s conduct toward us after setting this expectation worsened and we suspected he was engaging in Insurance Fraud.
Months later when it was apparent that Brian Darnell was breaching his contract and stealing our money we would engage several other roofing contractors for estimates on the repair work. When they saw the repair order that Darnell had given us they echoed our concern, that it looked as though Darnell had been attempting to commit insurance fraud.
As we would learn; the lies, illegal contract, breach of contract, theft, etc. would all show that it had been a huge mistake to hire Brian Darnell.