Arkansas.
My husband is a self-employed, ceramic tile contractor. Most of the jobs he does are specialty work using ceramic tile such as designs, brands, or first letter of last name on floors or counter tops and building ceramic tile showers. The lady(attorney) who has filed a civil suit against him had seen his work in a friends house and called to set up an appointment for him to come out and give her a bid to do some tile work in the new house she was building. The house is more than an hours drive from where we live and at the time my husband was working on one job and had three more to do after that. He was told the woman was very hard to please, he loves doing work for the "hard to please" more than anything, but he does not like to drive more than 30 or 45 minutes to a job(they always take 3 times longer to complete). Because of his lack of help, the long drive there and back, and so many other prior commitments he originaly told her he would not be able to take the job. We did not hear from her for a couple of days then she called again. She wanted to know if she provided him a camper to stay in at the job site so he would not have to drive back and forth would he be able to atleast do the kitchen, one bathroom and a mud room so that she could go ahead and move in. He decided to meet with her and give her a bid ONLY because if he stayed at the job site he could work her in to his schedule. He told her the cost for the three rooms and when he would be there to start. He had to rearrange and reschedule 2 months of work in order to fit her in. The night before he was to leave to start the job, she called to let him know the painters had not finished yet(he will not do ANY work until the painters are done!). This meant MORE rescheduling and rearranging! Since this happens often in the Construction line of work, he knew she was not to blame and told her to call and let him know when they did finish painting and as long as he had two days to wrap up whichever job he was working on at the time it would not be a problem. She called 2 weeks later and he told her he would be there in 3 days. When he got to the job site there was not a camper for him to stay in as promised. She just assumed since it had been almost a month since he told her he would do the job that he would no longer need a place to stay because he would have finished the jobs he had scheduled and only have hers to do. He told her he would work on her house for the next four days(this is the amount of time he had figured it would take him to complete the 3 rooms if he stayed on the job site as planned) but he would not be able to come back and finish up for two weeks. He had a job scheduled after hers that would take him 2 weeks. He worked the four days and told her what trim pieces he would need to complete the mud room when he came back in two weeks. She paid him $1200, $400 of that was for him to purchase needed materials for that job. When he left that day $2,000 worth of work had been completed. She paid for $800 of it leaving $1,200 unpaid. The $400 worth of materials were purchased by my husband that week and delivered to the job site so that they would be there when he returned to finish the job. That same week the lady informed a friend of ours who was also working for her that my husband had not returned to finish the job and she wanted to know why and when he would be there. She told our friend to tell my husband that since he would not complete the job she hired someone else. Now we are served with papers that she has filed a civil suit. She is asking for reinbursement for the cost of supposedly having the work my husband did torn up and redone, attorney and court costs, repayment for the $1,200 she paid my husband, and for costs of materials(used and unused!). There was no written contract, the bid was not even written. We were unable to get photos of the work done by my husband and have no way of knowing what the house looks like or has in it now since she also fired our friend who was working for her(he has worked for her for years doing wallpaper and was a long time family friend). She still owes my husband for the work done on the house!
