HomeLatest NewsFeatured HomebuildersHome Buyer ResourcesBinding ArbitrationResource LinksSubmit ComplaintsView ComplaintsTake Action 101!Report Mortgage FraudMortgage Fraud NewsForeclosure NewsConstruction DefectsHome DefectsPhoto GalleryFoundation ProblemsHomeowner Website LinksHOA Reform
Main Menu
Home
Latest News
Featured Homebuilders
Home Buyer Resources
Binding Arbitration
Resource Links
Submit Complaints
View Complaints
Take Action 101!
Report Mortgage Fraud
Mortgage Fraud News
Foreclosure News
Construction Defects
Home Defects
Photo Gallery
Foundation Problems
Homeowner Website Links
HOA Reform
Featured Topics
Builder Death Spiral
Report Mortgage Fraud
Foreclosure Special Report
Mold & New Home Guide
Special News Reports
Centex & Habitability
How Fast Can They Build Them?
TRCC Editorial
Texas TRCC Scandal
Texas Watch - Tell Lawmakers
TRCC Recommendations
Sandra Bullock
People's Lawyer
Prevent Nightmare Homes
Choice Homes
Smart Money
Weekly Update Message
News
Latest News
HOBB News
Editorials
New Jersey
New Jersey & Texas
Write Letters to the Editors
TRCC in the News
Texas TRCC Scandal
Survey
Fair Use Notice
HOBB Archives
About HOBB
Contact Us
Fair Use Notice
Legislative Work
Your House

 HOBB News Alerts
and Updates

Click Here to Subscribe

Support HOBB - Become a Sustaining Member
Who's Online
We have 1 guest online
ABC Special Report
Investigation: New Home Heartbreak
Trump - NAHB Homebuilders Shoddy Construction and Forced Arbitration
Is there any Justice in Texas?
Wednesday, 04 April 2007

A Citizen’s Lament - Was justice denied in a Fannin County court?
“In June 2005, after helping construct a subfloor for Pat and Bob Egert’s new house in Ben Franklin, Bobby Fines, owner of Cedar Log Homes in Ivanhoe, owed me $530 for my work,” Starkey said. “I called his residence and Vicky Leggett, his partner, answered.  I said, ‘I’d like to have my money.’”...And Starkey was $1500 poorer because of a lawyer he shouldn’t have needed and was still out the $530 allegedly owed him by Fines. See related article: Homeowner convicted for reporting Builder to TRCC & the Better Business Bureau

A Citizen’s Lament 

Was justice denied in a Fannin County court? 

 

Story by S. I. BANISTER  
Special Contributor 

         On January 6, 1844, Charles Dickens took unscrupulous publishers to court for pirating his new book, A Christmas Carol.

“In a triumph of legal sleight of hand,” Tim Halliman wrote in A Christmas Carol Christmas Book, the publishers “declared bankruptcy and disappeared, leaving Dickens to pay... court costs.... three times as much as he had made in an entire year as a newspaper reporter.... When his court costs were figured... A Christmas Carol had cost its author 470 pounds.  That night, Dickens said he ‘slept as badly as MacBeth.'”  

  
     
     Don Starkey  
One man who could sympathize with Dickens is Don Starkey, a soft-spoken, hard-of- hearing widower from Brookston in Lamar County.

“In June 2005, after helping construct a subfloor for Pat and Bob Egert’s new house in Ben Franklin, Bobby Fines, owner of Cedar Log Homes in Ivanhoe, owed me $530 for my work,” Starkey said. “I called his residence and Vicky Leggett, his partner, answered.  I said, ‘I’d like to have my money.’”

“’No,’ she answered, “’you can’t have it because you stole trees from me.’”

“I told her Bobby gave them to me. She said they weren’t his to give away-- that they were hers,” Starkey said.

Given Away, or Stolen?
“Fines was buying a nursery and had already hauled off everything he wanted,” Starkey continued. “A friend was with me when Fines offered them to me. Fines said to take whatever I wanted.  He told me he had already taken and sold thousands of dollars worth of plants.  I took about 125 shrubs in April after Fines gave me directions to the nursery west of Roxton.”

“In May [2005] he asked me if I had gotten any shrubs, and I said ‘Yes,’” Starkey said.

“In June, after I had filed in the Fannin County Small Claims Court for the wages he owed me, I received a letter from his attorney, Joe Moss.  Fines was counter-suing, claiming I had stolen $4,000 worth of shrubs from him!”

Small Claims Court
After filing a claim for his wages with the Fannin County Justice of the Peace, Starkey got a court date. “But I had to work out-of-town on that date,” Starkey said, “so I requested the date be reset.

I also asked if I could have someone represent me in court as I have difficulty hearing, and the Justice of the Peace secretary said ‘yes’.  At the hearing to reset the date, Bob Egert, a friend but not an attorney, accompanied me as my agent.

“Then Joe Moss [attorney for counter-plaintiff Fines], in front of the judge said that I needed to pay him $800 because he came to the hearing.  The judge overruled Moss.  Moss also stated that I could have only a lawyer represent me.  The judge then said to me, ‘You have to have a lawyer to speak for you’.”

“I hired Mike Mosher, a licensed lawyer in Paris, and paid him $2000.  If I won, Fines would pay for everything.  I was willing to take that chance since there was a witness to Fines’ offering me the nursery stock.”

“On May 15, 2006, the day of the trial,” Starkey said, “my adult daughter was not allowed to enter the courtroom.  She sat in the hall along with the witness.  Mosher took me back in a room and said something to the effect that if we won, Moss would make it so Fines wouldn’t have to pay.”

“Mosher added ‘This could go on for years. They want to settle.’” 

“Mosher continued, ‘You pay me, Fines pays his lawyer and we all go home.’”

“I replied,’Well!’ I said neither yes or no as I was taken back by his statement and wanted to think about it.”

According to Starkey, he and Mosher then returned to the courtroom, where the judge announced, “They have settled.” About 15 potential jurors were then dismissed.

“I never agreed to a settlement! I felt railroaded at this point and didn’t know what to do,” Starkey explained.

“Mosher promised to give me $560 back out of the $2,000 I had paid him since he had not pleaded my case as I had hired him to do,” Starkey said.  “After calling him several times, he returned $500.“

The Agent
In a letter dated August 29, 2005 (a month before the October 12, 2005 hearing to reset the court date), Bob Egert had written, “Dear Honorable Joe Dale: At Donald Starkey’s request I am acting as his agent.... "

“I stood up at the beginning of court and identified myself as Starkey’s agent,” Egert said.   “ Moss, Fines’ lawyer, protested, saying I would go to jail posing as an attorney.  He asked me, ‘Are you an attorney?’ I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘Then you cannot represent Starkey. I’ll sue you if you act as a lawyer.’”

According to Texas Government Code, Section 28, a licensed lawyer is not required.  A person may represent himself or herself in a Small Claims Court or designate someone (called an agent) to speak on their behalf.

“I questioned why Moss wanted to toss me out of the courtroom,” Egert continued. “I was not posing as or claiming to be a lawyer.”

“Judge Dale supported Moss’s claim that I could not represent Starkey, although he had earlier said I could,” Egert added. “I had called the judge again prior to going that day and his secretary said, ‘Yes, the judge said you may come [as an agent].’”

Starkey, Egert, and a witness (who requests their name not be used) all claim that they heard Judge Dale tell Starkey he needed a lawyer.

Judge Joe Dale
Asked recently about the incident in his court, Judge Dale denied that he told Starkey he needed a lawyer. He remembered, however, a “squabble” between Moss and Egert, but he couldn’t recall what it was about.

We had to have everything in right perspective,” Dale said several times.

I asked Dale what he meant by his statement. He would not explain.

Upon being shown Egert’s letter notifying Dale a month in advance of the trial that Egert intended to act as Starkey’s agent, Dale admitted that the letter was appropriate and in order. He had no further comments about it.

Joe Moss...
 ...of Bonham, attorney for Bobby Fines, does not remember asking $800 of Starkey that day in court, but he doesn’t deny it.

“There’s no telling what I’ll get up in a courtroom and say,” he said recently.

“Mr. Egert appeared as an attorney in justice court. I appeared for Fines.  The judge ruled that the amount of controversy exceeded what’s allowed in a Small Claims Court and transferred it to the Country Court.

[County] Judge Hall wouldn’t let him proceed,” Moss said.

But according to Starkey, Egert, and Dale, the court was presided over by Dale, and the amount of claims did not exceed the Small Claims Court limit of $5,000 as Moss claimed.

When asked how Egert acted “as an attorney,” Moss claimed that he was “signing pleadings.”

Egert denies that, saying he doesn’t even know what “pleadings” are.  Judge Bud Skinner, Delta County Justice of the Peace, said, “I’ve never heard the term ‘signing pleadings’ in a justice court.”

Moss added, “Mosher [Starkey’s lawyer] and I talked on the phone beforehand about a settlement.  The court was going to be a foolish waste of time and money.”

Mike Mosher...
 ...of Paris, attorney for Starkey, laughed when asked last week if he and Moss had a telephone conversation about a settlement prior to the court date. He denied it.

“I did what Starkey wanted.  He made the decision to settle and we went fully briefed into the courtroom,” Mosher said.

“He gained by settling,” Mosher added.

Starkey’s story is a “complete mistake of facts” according to Mosher. Asked if Starkey signed a statement directing a settlement, he said no. “You recite the terms and it’s put on the [court] record.”

When reminded that a Small Claims Court keeps no record, he did not comment.

“The settlement didn’t benefit me at all,” he added.

More “Giveaways”
And what about Fines’ claim that Starkey stole trees and plants “without his knowledge or authorization?”

A former employee of Fines-- and Starkey’s aforementioned witness who asked that his name not be used in this story-- said he was present when Fines offered the trees to Starkey. â€œFines wanted to give me some trees too, but I didn’t want any,” he said.

Fines also offered plants to Ladoyce Hervey of Mesquite, whose old homeplace adjoins Fines’ property in Delta County.

“Fines told me he bought a nursery in Lamar County,” Hervey stated.  “He said to go over and get what I wanted.  Since I was then president of a beautification committee for Delta County, I wanted some crepe myrtle trees.” 

“The roots had grown through the buckets into the ground,” Hervey said. “I put a chain around the buckets and then hooked it onto my truck and pulled them out. It was almost more trouble than it was worth, but I got 24 trees for Cooper.  I was under the impression Fines wanted them out of the way.” 

Fines also told a Cooper resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity, to “take as many [free] plants” as he would like.  He did.  The resident’s son-in-law went with him and took about 25 trees for himself too.

During the March or April 2005 meeting of the Ben Franklin Water Board at the Methodist Church, Vicky Leggett (Fines’ partner) announced to about 20 people present that they could have free plants from their nursery.

Fines made the same offer to Bob and Pat Egert of Ben Franklin. According to the Egerts (who got about 40 trees), Fines also told them he had previously sold $71,000 worth of plants.

A
nd what about Leggett who, according to Starkey, had claimed that the trees were not Fines’ to give away but hers?  In the filed counter-suit dated August 19, 2005, Moss wrote, “Fines was and still is the owner of trees, shrubs, and plants in a nursery....”

However, the Public Information Office of the Texas Department of Agriculture said there is “no record of a nursery license for Bobby Fines.... penalties for operating a nursery without a license range up to $500.”

There is also no record of Fines suing any of the above people for stealing plants from his nursery. Of course, none of them except Starkey had a suit pending against him.

The End of the Matter
Playing on the words of  Ronald Reagon in the biography Ronnie & Nancy (by Bob Colacello), has our county seat “become the seat of a buddy system that functions for its own benefit-- increasingly insensitive to the needs of the resident who supports it with his taxes?” 

Mosher never once pleaded for Starkey’s wages. He also did not defend Starkey against the counter-suit, in spite of  many witnesses to the “great plant giveaway.”  Without pleading or defending, he was $1500 richer, which refutes his statement that the settlement “didn’t benefit” him “at all.”

Moss also supposedly profited, although he claims that Fines still owes him for his services.

Tax payers paid for potential jurors who showed up but weren’t utilized.

Bobby Fines has at least a half-dozen judgments against him according to the Texas Attorney General’s Office.

Although the details are in dispute, one thing is undeniable: Egert was prevented from being Starkey’s agent, which was his perfect right to be under the law.

And Starkey was $1500 poorer because of a lawyer he shouldn’t have needed and was still out the $530 allegedly owed him by Fines.

Dickens could have related to that. This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

 

 

 
< Prev   Next >
Search HOBB.org

Reckless Endangerment
BY: GRETCHEN MORGENSON
and JOSHUA ROSNER

Outsized Ambition, Greed and
Corruption Led to
Economic Armageddon


Amazon
Barnes & Noble

 Feature
Rise and Fall of Predatory Lending and Housing

NY Times: Building Flawed American Dreams 
Read CATO Institute: 
HUD Scandals

Listen to NPR:
Reckless Endangerman
by
Gretchen Morgenson : How 'Reckless' Greed Contributed
to Financial Crisis - Fannie Mae

NPR Special Report
Part I Listen Now
Perry Home - No Warranty 
Part II Listen Now
Texas Favors Builders

Washington Post
The housing bubble, in four chapters
BusinessWeek Special Reports
Bonfire of the Builders
Homebuilders helped fuel the housing crisis
Housing: That Sinking Feeling

Texas Regulates Homebuyers
 
Texas Comptroller Condemns TRCC Builder Protection Agency
TRCC is the punishment phase of homeownership in Texas

HOBB Update Messages

Consumer Affairs Builder Complaints

IS YOUR STATE NEXT?
As Goes Texas So Goes the Nation
Knowledge and Financial Responsibility are still Optional for Texas Home Builders

OUTSTANDING FOX4 REPORT
TRCC from Bad to Worse
Case of the Crooked House

TRCC AN ARRESTING EXPERIENCE
The Pat and Bob Egert Building & TRCC Experience 

Builders Looking for Federal Handouts

Build it right the first time
An interview with Janet Ahmad

Bad Binding Arbitration Experience?
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
or call 1-210-402-6800

Drum Major Institute
for Public Policy

Tort Deform
Report Your Arbitration Experience

Homebuilding Texas Style
And the walls came
tumblin' down

 Texas Homebuilder
Bob Perry Political Contributions

  The Agency Bob Perry Built
 TRCC Connection News
Tort Reform

NPR Interview - Perry's
Political influence movement.
Click to listen 

REWARD
MOST WANTED

ARIZONA REGISTRAR OF CONTRACTORS
Have you seen any of these individuals

 Feature: Mother Jones Magazine
Are you Next?
People Magazine - Jordan Fogal fights back
Because of construction defects Jordan’s Tremont Home is uninhabitable
http://www.tremonthomehorrors.com/
You could be the next victim
Interview with Award Winning Author Jordan Fogal

Special Money Report
Big Money and Shoddy Construction:Texas Home Buyers Left Out in the Cold
Read More
Read Report: Big Money…
Home Builder Money Source of Influence

Letters to the Editor
Write your letters to the Editor

Homeowner Websites

top of page

© 2024 HomeOwners for Better Building
Joomla! is Free Software released under the GNU/GPL License.