Threatened with suit by shady roofer

[anon37127]

Tennessee

We have now received our 3rd letter from a 3rd lawyer threatening a lawsuit because of a "breach of contract". Although we did sign an agreement with this particular roofer to replace our roof, it was based on the insurance company approving the claim.

The insurance company initially did approve the claim, however we discovered that the claim was inflated by over 6K because the roof was over measured by 700 sq ft. When we questioned the roofer, he claimed that he had to charge exactly what the insurance paid, and that "it isn't your money, it's the insurance companies money" Bottom line, we called our insurance company ( I wanted nothing to do with what sounded like fraud to me) who cancelled the check and issued a check based on the real size of the roof, which had nothing to do with the original roofer.

Now they are trying to collect 20% of the original check plus legal fees plus 20% of our deductable (about $3,800) Do they actually have a chance of winning this in court?

 

[JETX]

Do they actually have a chance of winning this in
court?

A chance?? Of course they do.

However, all you have to do is show the court where your original contract included the statement that it was contingent "on the insurance company approving the claim" and that the amount was to be based on the amount of the check they actually paid.

I will offer though that you (apparently) handled this poorly.
Did you notify the original contractor of the discrepancy in WRITING??
If so, what was their response IN WRITING??
Finally, did you terminate the contract in WRITING to them??

 

[anon37127]

I'm sure we could have handled it better. We did verbally try to cancel the contract to which the contractor told us he would take us to court. Before trying to cancel the contract we attempted verbally to remedy the problem with the contractor. He would have nothing to do with it.

There is more to the situation than what is in the post, such as them not being licensed at the time the agreement was signed, the fact that my insurance adjuster never even got on the roof, he just wrote down what their rep told him, the verbal estimates were about 2-3K lower than the written estimate, the estimate changed as soon as they found out what the check was written for, and they were charging for work they weren't going to do. And that's just some of it.

I guess my only other question would be, if this goes to court, what type of an attorney would I need?