Poor Workmanship by Contractors
QUESTION: In my community, the work performed by hired contractors has been poorly done. The most recent project involved painting the doors of individual units. This work was performed just six months ago, and the paint is already peeling. In Virginia, what steps can be taken to protect our community against hiring companies with poor job performance, and do arbitration clauses make it difficult to obtain monetary compensation once the contractor's bill has been paid?
RESPONSE: Thanks for your question. This isn't necessarily a community association question, but is instead a general contract law question. In other words, the advice I might give your association would be the same I might give an individual homeowner who got a bad paint job but doesn't live in an HOA or condo. Therefore, if your association is looking to hire an attorney to go after this contractor, it wouldn't necessarily have to be one who specializes in community association law.
That being said, your association should simply do better homework to study a contractor before hiring him....check with the BBB, ask for references (and check on them), etc. If you use a property manager, lean on the manager's advice, because they normally know which contractors are good or bad because they use them on a regular basis. The other thing the association can do is to always have the construction contract reviewed ahead of time by an attorney to make sure the association is adequately protected, because the association's ability to sue the contractor or make him come back to fix the problem will largely be dictated by what your contract says (or doesn't say).
Arbitration clauses aren't necessarily good or bad. Theoretically, handling a dispute before an arbitrator is supposed to be cheaper and quicker than court (although that is not always the case). Another upside with arbitration is that you can have some say in who the arbitrator will be (as opposed to court, where you don't get to help pick the judge). Finally, the rules of evidence are not as strict as in court, which could help or hurt you depending on the circumstances. In the end, however, a mandatory arbitration clause would not theoretically make any recovery against the contractor more difficult.
Greg Montero