A-1 Exterminating Trial Ends Favorably For A Victim of Fraud
A Settlement Results After Several Days of Savage Testimony
A Settlement Results After Several Days of Savage Testimony
Testimony revealed that A-1 Exterminating actually does not employee anyone. A sister company that performs residential insulating service is the employer and benefit provider. Alabama law requires that exterminators actually employee the individuals the State is trying to regulate.
Like trusting your life to a surgeon, we have to entrust our homes to professionals who know how to prevent termite infestation. A-1 tried to claim that the widowed school teacher should have inspected the crawl area under her home and identified conditions that caused termite and fungus problems to worsen over two decades.
A-1 falsely claimed that it was "termite proofing" the homes it placed under contract. While that goal is achievable, meeting it requires actually applying the chemical barrier according to the recipe on chemical labels. A-1 never did that. Even after termite damage was discovered, A-1 failed to apply the proper barrier.
The theme of the case was that A-1's failure to vaccinate the home from termite infestation caused damage from infestation. For the next 18 years, the widowed school teacher we represented paid to renew her protection. Damage occured and worsened throughout the period. Two months before she discovered the damage when a carpenter tried to remove a deck, an A-1 inspector claimed to have inspected the crawlsapce. He told her there was no problem and no damage to the home. The evidence showed the company never did proper vaccinations to any home.
A-1 accurately described the importance of having a professional apply a vaccination from termites to a home. Consequently, the company knew what would happen to people when it took their money without providing the service.
Alabama's top "watchdog" over termite companies testified that the Environmental Protection Agency requires scientific proof that products registered for termite prevention will actually do that for at least five years if you follow the instructions on a label. He testified it is proper to compare a termite treatment to the peace of mind a parent gets when having vaccinations performed to prevent childhood disease.Only a professional can tell when the vaccine is skipped and a placebo substituted for the real thing.The law calls that that a breach of professional duty - and fraud.
If you want good results, Campbell Law PC attorneys think it is critical to use experts who are both credible and capable of translating what they know to jurors who are not experts in termite prevention. The expert in this trial literally wrote the content for the industry's annual report on the latest developments in termite work. The defense expert misrepresented the degree of infestation in this home. He claimed there was no evidence of infestation. However, he supervised a remedial treatment. in that remedial treatment, the defense expert should have seen a drill hole being made four inches from a large termite tunnel on the foundation wall. The expert, Bruce Alverson, also an industry veteran, admitted Bello was right and he was wrong.
The gevernment watchdog admitted that the product A-1 used to prevent termites - even if it were actually used - wore off in just 5 to 7 years. The responsible members of the industry applied full "booster" treatments every five years. Despite unrebutted evidence that 42% of its treatments failed to prevent termites, A-1 has never applied booster treatments.
A-1 claimed it was not responsible for servicing the garage and the homeowner should not have believed that this detached structure was part of its contract. However, the customer file showed that in most years the homeowner told the scheduler that she was leaving her garage door opener on the porch so he could inspect the garage.
The client learned her home was damaged at the worst time of her life.After two surgeries, doctors told her she was terminal and had less than three years to live.Her boys gave her a new deck and screened porch for her Christmas gift so she could enjoy her homebound status more. That is when the fraud and termite damage was discovered.
