Deceptive Trade Practices Attorney in Houston, Texas
Tell us about a deceptive trade practice case you’ve handled.
Tell us about a deceptive trade practice case you’ve handled.
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00:04
deceptive trade
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practice also known as a dtpa come up in
00:10
a number of cases
00:12
and comes up in a number of business
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cases
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but one consumer case that i handled
00:18
years ago was very interesting and my
00:20
client came to me
00:22
and it was a dispute that you know
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unfortunately
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happens all too often in that she had an
00:28
issue with
00:29
a contractor at her house specifically a
00:31
pool contractor
00:32
she believed that she’d overpaid the
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pool contractor and she sued the
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pool contractor for the overpayment
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but it was a kind of diy situation in
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which she sued the contractor and
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justice of the peace corps
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the contractor answered with an attorney
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and
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it turns out that you know she didn’t
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doubt her eyes across her t’s
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and the pool contractor who was
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represented
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got a judgment against her uh she came
01:03
to me
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trying to appeal that judgment i looked
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at the file
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saw where you know her calculations were
01:09
wrong
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that the pool contractor didn’t know or
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anything but also
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didn’t believe that she should have to
01:15
pay the judgment it was kind of a gotcha
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case and
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uh so i talked to the pool um
01:22
contractor’s lawyer about having her pay
01:25
a nominal
01:26
sum just to close out the matter i
01:28
thought that would get it done
01:29
unfortunately he didn’t get it done the
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pool contractors
01:33
attorney said they wanted all of their
01:35
judgment even though
01:36
in my opinion they didn’t earn any of it
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and so we went to litigation and the
01:41
case continued for a while
01:42
and we started to fully investigate our
01:45
clients claims
01:46
when we started to fully analyze the
01:48
pool construction itself
01:51
and it turns out that the pool
01:52
contractor charged my client for certain
01:54
re-routes
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because of the way the pool had to be
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constructed in their backyard
02:00
the client was charged for an electrical
02:02
reroute to take
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electrical lines which were buried in
02:05
the backyard
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and move them so the pool could be
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installed uh it turns out
02:10
that the electrical right reroute was
02:13
not done properly
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my client also paid for a sewer reroute
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to
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reroute the sewell line around
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uh her backyard so the pool could be
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properly installed
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turns out that the sewer reroute had not
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been done at all
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we got an expert out there to to
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essentially dig
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under her pool under the uh
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pool deck and discovered that there was
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a
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pipe that had simply been cut off
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and had not been connected or rerouted
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to anything
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so we had a videotape of that experts
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analysis that experts i mean the first
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time they dug under the pool deck we had
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a
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videographer there because we suspected
02:56
something was wrong
02:58
it turns out that we counter claimed
03:01
against the pool contractor for
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the electrical reroute that had not been
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done properly and the surrey route that
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had not been done at all
03:10
and she wound up getting a free pool
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plus attorney’s fees
03:14
so it was a good result
Houston, TX commercial litigation attorney Dwaine Massey shares the story of a deceptive trade practice case he handled.
