Listen to this article Adam Clark shows where a construction contractor allegedly did sub-standard work on his Essex Junction home on Thursday, December 19. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDiggerAdam Clark and Eva-Marie Cosoroaba purchased their first home in Essex Junction in March 2021. The two-story residential home needed some work, and later that year the couple contracted with Vermont Construction Company to do the renovations.In 2022, the company installed a new structural beam in the basement to hold up the second floor, reframed a second-story addition on the house, and installed a bay window replacement, according to records provided to VTDigger.At first the couple was happy with the work, but in the spring of 2023, several months after the birth of their daughter, they discovered problems with each of the projects they regarded as serious, Clark said.The couple hired a structural engineer who reported that the structural beam had been assembled incorrectly and didn’t meet industry standards for beam strength and stiffness. The house had significant wood decay and deterioration in an exterior wall, but instead of notifying the couple of that damage, the company left the damaged wood in place and attached new materials to it, “creating a questionable support system/back-up structure for the new construction,” the structural engineer wrote.The engineer’s final report opined that the work “was poorly executed, sub-standard and out of sync with normal construction standards in use today.”Clark attempted to contact managers with Vermont Construction Company to address his concerns but he felt he was ignored, he said. In a phone call, one of the company’s co-founders, David Richards, denied they did anything wrong, and suggested that Clark pay the company to fix the issues with the house, Clark said.“It’s hard to verbalize the amount of stress this situation has brought to my family, our finances, and my career,” Clark wrote in a complaint to the Better Business Bureau, “all of which is because of the absolute mess that Vermont Construction has caused in our lives.”On Monday, Clark sued the company, alleging a breach of contract and negligence, among other charges. He is seeking $60,000 in direct monetary damages, as well as other expenses.Clark isn’t the only one embroiled in a legal dispute with Vermont Construction Company. The company has been sued at least three times since 2021, according to a review of Chittenden County court records, and it has filed three suits against its own clients for refusing to pay the total amount invoiced. Each of those clients, in turn, filed counterclaims against the company.Adam Clark and his wife Eva Cosoroaba pose with their daughter Keana in the living room of their Essex Junction home on Thursday, December 19. The family uses the living room as an office and bedroom in the wake of alleged sub-standard construction by a contractor. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDiggerThe three lawsuits and three counterclaims against Vermont Construction Company make various claims, including that homeowners paid for work on their homes that was either not done correctly or not done at all. Several clients allege that the company overcharged them for work, and refused to provide details about what they were being charged for, according to court records.One counterclaim alleges the company committed consumer fraud.Vermont Construction Company, in an emailed statement, said the company could not comment on legal matters or individual customer situations, but said it “has completed thousands of successful projects for Vermont homeowners over the past year, maintaining a strong track record of quality work.”“While the vast majority of our projects conclude with satisfied customers, occasional disagreements are a reality in the construction industry,” the company said in a statement. “When issues arise, we address them directly and professionally. We take all customer concerns seriously and remain committed to quality workmanship and workplace safety.”The allegations laid out in the court cases point to a blind spot in Vermont’s regulatory system.Unlike many other occupations and industries, residential contractors are not required to be licensed in Vermont. And for residential dwellings with four or fewer units, there is no legal requirement for them to follow state building codes. One report, commissioned in 2017 by the state’s Office of Professional Regulation, likened the industry to the “Wild West.”In 2022, lawmakers did pass legislation that added new authority to oversee home improvement complaints within the Secretary of State’s Office of Professional Regulation and the consumer assistance program in the Vermont Attorney General’s Office.But those regulations are still in their infancy, according to state officials. And some residents, like Clark, say the system has failed to bring accountability.  “For a very, very long time, the residential contractor industry was basically an unregulated industry,” said Christopher Curtis, the director of the consumer assistance program and an assistant state attorney general. “I give lawmakers high marks for establishing a registration process and (the Office of Professional Regulation) for providing a home in state government for regulation and oversight.”“That said,” he added, “we know that it can be really challenging for consumers to know exactly where to go.”READ MORE ‘Deplorable and appalling’Vermont Construction Company was first incorporated in early 2016, according to business filings. It was co-founded by Dana Kamencik and David Richards, the filings state. Kamencik is the new owner of the Isham Family Farm in Williston.The company often does business under the name of a parent company called KMC Construction Inc., which has three principal owners: Kamencik, Richards and Robert Richards, who is listed as the secretary of the company with an address in Hinesburg. It has quickly become one of the most recognizable residential contracting companies in the state — appearing in commercials and other advertisements around northwest Vermont.In September it was named the “official roofing partner” of University of Vermont Athletics. According to VermontBiz magazine, the company was named the fastest growing firm in Vermont in 2023, with a five-year growth rate of “a whopping 1400%,” the publication wrote.But in recent months, the company has run afoul of several municipal and state fire marshal building codes, and has been accused of housing company workers in “grossly hazardous and unsafe” conditions. Since 2018, Vermont Construction Company has also racked up five Vermont Occupational Safety and Health Administration violations, according to Rachel Dumeny, a spokesperson for the state Department of Labor.Three of those citations took place this year. In each of the five complaints, workers with the company were observed working at high elevation without proper fall protection measures, according to the violations.The company has used several properties it owns in Colchester, Shelburne, Essex and Williston to house seasonal workers. Earlier this month, the town of Colchester ordered the company to vacate part of its headquarters after finding that it was being used to house an estimated 17 people “despite having no approvals for life safety features for human occupancy of a public building,” according to the town’s complaint.In September, town and state fire marshal officials found that 60 people were living in similar conditions in a house in Colchester.Pam Loranger, the chair of the Colchester selectboard, during a Dec. 9 meeting, called the housing situation “deplorable and appalling,” and likened the company’s practices to “keeping these people like indentured slaves, servants.”She asked Colchester’s town manager, Aaron Frank, to reach out to neighboring municipalities and “let them know that we may have a grave situation of public safety and may need their mutual support.”“If past performance is any indication of future behavior, I’m not confident that these folks are going to recognize the violation,” she said.The Vermont Construction Company headquarters in Colchester. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger‘Defective work’As local and state officials have cited Vermont Construction Company for safety and zoning violations, clients have lodged a series of complaints about the company’s work. In a lawsuit filed in October, Shyla and Andrew Stewart, who hired the company to work on their Grand Isle home’s roof in September 2023, allege that the company made “false claims about the work that it performed and the justification for its charges.”Their complaint alleges the company overcharged them for work by several thousand dollars and claimed that it violated state home improvement fraud and consumer protection laws.Reached by email, the Stewarts declined to comment.Another lawsuit, filed in April, accused the company of negligence, “poor workmanship,” and a breach of good faith and fair dealing.Huntington property owners Mark McGinley and Zoe Papas contracted with the company in May 2019 to replace their roof and install three new skylights, according to court records. But, according to their lawsuit, they soon discovered problems with the work.Upon completion, the skylights began leaking when it rained but the company took no responsibility, they said in their complaint.They ended up contracting with another company to fix the work, according to the lawsuit. That company, the lawsuit states, discovered “multiple issues from Defendant’s defective work,” including shingles that were improperly installed. The skylights, they said in the complaint, were not installed to the manufacturer’s specifications.McGinley and Papas asked a judge to find the company liable and award them damages, according to court records.Through their attorney, Jeffrey Messina, they declined to comment. Celeste Laramie, an attorney with Gravel & Shea who is representing the Vermont Construction Company, didn’t respond to an email requesting comment. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDiggerPayment disputes In some cases, the reverse has happened, with the Vermont Construction Company suing its clients.Sandra King, a property owner in Waltham, was sued by the company in February. It claimed that King had yet to pay a final invoice for a kitchen remodeling job completed in March 2022. Similarly, Dana and Fransese Potter, who own property in Hinesburg, hired the company in August 2023 to finish their basement, according to court records. The work was completed, the company said in the suit, but the Potters “paid some, but not all, of the invoices for the work.”In both cases, the property owners filed counterclaims. The Potters, in a May 2024 counterclaim, said Vermont Construction Company did not perform “all the work required” and suggested the work that was completed “was limited and below the standard of quality provided for in the contract.”They denied that they owe the company any more money, and alleged in their counterclaim that the company failed to “maintain full and proper documentation and control over its labor and accounts.”That litigation is currently in the discovery phase, according to court records. William Vassiliou, an attorney for the Potters, declined to comment, and the Potters could not be reached for comment.King’s counterclaim, meanwhile, alleges that the company violated the state’s consumer fraud act.The original estimate King agreed to, according to the counterclaim, was for $53,845. But the company ended up billing her a total of $140,341, court records show. She ended up paying $98,427, according to court records.“Vermont Construction, intentionally, recklessly, or negligently misrepresented the expected cost of the project in order to entice King to hire Vermont Construction and allow Vermont Construction to commence work and to add to the scope of work,” King’s counterclaim reads.King could not be reached for comment. Kevin Brown, her attorney, did not respond to an email and voicemail seeking comment.In a 2021 lawsuit against Jericho property owners Joanna and Timothy Kelly, Vermont Construction Company made similar allegations — that they refused to pay the company for completed work.In their counterclaim, the Kellys alleged the company provided insufficient information around pricing and estimates, and denied that the company completed the agreed upon work, according to court records.The work the company performed, they said in their counterclaim, “has proven to be defective.”“Support columns installed to support the addition over the garage are undersized and have begun to exhibit signs of incipient failure,” according to their counterclaim. “Pipes installed in exterior walls were inadequately insulated, so that they froze and burst, damaging not only the addition but also other parts of the home.”That case was eventually settled out of court in February 2024. The Kellys were not available for comment.David Bond, their attorney, said the settlement agreement “contains a disparagement clause, so I can’t say anything.”Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger‘Stacked in their favor’In 2023, Clark and Cosoroaba filed several complaints with state agencies regarding Vermont Construction Company’s work — including with the Attorney General’s Office Consumer Assistance Program and the Secretary of State’s Office of Professional Regulation.But the complaints went nowhere. According to email correspondence provided by Clark, Michael Warren, a chief investigator with the Office of Professional Regulation, told Clark that they were unable to investigate or prosecute claims that arise from conduct that occurred before the new state law took effect.In follow-up emails, the possibility of filing a lawsuit against the company was raised.“While I can’t advise you on doing that, it is another option (I know it’s a costly option) that you could also pursue,” Warren wrote in an email to Clark. “Sometimes there isn’t one best way to deal with this type of situation. It may take several resources and avenues to accomplish your goal of recovering from this mess they created.”Clark replied that he was “determined to seek justice in this case.”“It’s unfortunate that the law in Vermont seems to be very much stacked in their favor,” he added.For many years Vermont was one of a handful of states — New Hampshire, Maine and Oklahoma, among them — that had no regulations on residential contractors.Other states, like Massachusetts and California, license residential contractors administratively or through a state board, while other states register them at the county or municipal level.“This was a completely unregulated space,” said Deputy Secretary of State Lauren Hibbert in an interview.The only avenue to issue a complaint against a residential contractor was through the state’s Consumer Assistance Program, housed within the Vermont Attorney General’s Office. That program works to mediate disputes between consumers and service providers.Since January 2017, the program has received 1,220 home improvement complaints, with claimed losses totaling more than $12 million, according to Amelia Vath, a communications coordinator with the attorney general’s office.But the program is constrained in its ability to enforce any action. A complaint Clark filed with the program against Vermont Construction Company ultimately went nowhere, Clark said, because the company stopped responding to the program.The Consumer Assistance Program has received four complaints against Vermont Construction Company since 2022, according to Vath.Two of those complaints allege unfinished or incomplete work, one alleges unsatisfactory service, and another alleges a failure to perform and deliver materials.One of those complaints has been resolved, two remain pending, “and the last was closed after repeated attempts to reach the business were unsuccessful,” Vath said.Vermont only recently started creating stronger regulations for home contractors. Act 182, signed into law in May 2022, gave the Office of Professional Regulation some power to regulate home contractors.The law created a mandatory registration within the office for any contractor undertaking a residential construction project whose estimated value is $10,000 or more, inclusive of labor and materials. The registration, officials said, offers consumers the opportunity to look up whether a contractor is in good standing with the state.State Rep. Scott Campbell, D-St. Johnsbury, one of the sponsors of the bill, said in an interview that “things are improving slowly,” but added that it’s “taken a while for the Office of Professional Regulation to sort of get all the pieces in place.”Not every contractor has registered, he said, “and there’s still really no teeth.”The legislation materialized several years after a sunshine report was issued in January 2018. That report, requested by the Senate Committee on Government Operations and conducted by the Secretary of State’s Office, was prompted by growing concern about consumer harm in the building trades.The report identified “consumer harm occurring within a narrow but significant band of the unregulated market for professional home-improvement and construction services.”It likened the industry to the “Wild West.”“As a government, Vermont offers homeowners no assurance of basic competence and accountability specific to home-improvement contractors,” the report reads. “The State regulates who can paint fingernails, but not who can work on the most valuable asset most people own, which can be rendered uninhabitable by negligence.”The new law has since given the Office of Professional Regulation more regulatory powers. But the office remains unable to prosecute claims that occurred before April 2024 — Act 182 didn’t take effect until April 2023, and it provided a yearlong grace period for contractors to register.Without licensing or statewide building codes required for residential property, Vermont has very few requirements of contractors, Campbell said.“I hesitate to say that some sort of licensure would be best, but it probably would be best for consumers,” Campbell said. “Then there would be a clear set of requirements that everybody could lean on.”Hibbert said because there are no universal building codes in the state, the Office of Professional Regulation is “precluded from prosecuting any cases related to quality of work because of that lack of a standard.”Jennifer Colin, general counsel for the Vermont Secretary of State’s Office, said there have been no prosecuted enforcement cases in which Vermont Construction Company has been publicly disciplined or sanctioned for unprofessional conduct.It is unclear whether complaints have been filed against the company. Colin said state law protects registered contractors from disclosure of complaints “that are screened out or closed without the filing of unprofessional conduct charges.”“In other words, I am not at liberty to disclose to you whether there have been complaints filed against Vermont Construction Company, nor could I disclose any information about any complaints that were filed,” she said.‘This kind of stuff can ruin people’In his case against the company, Clark, who is representing himself, is hoping to recoup at least $60,000 — the amount he says he is owed for damages he incurred. The couple has since hired another company to address the work done by Vermont Construction Company.“It’s been tough financially, unfortunately, but it didn’t ruin us,” Clark said in an interview. “This kind of stuff can ruin people.”Originally from Texas, Clark and his wife moved to Vermont in 2018 and rented in Burlington for several years. Clark said he’s been left aghast at the lack of accountability in the industry.“I come from Texas. It’s obviously a conservative state, and so you would imagine that corporations just kind of run everything there,” he said in an interview. “But you can’t just build houses and… do structural work without having a state inspector come by. Here you can.”The couple, with their dog and their 2-year-old child, have been living on the second floor of their home as they wait for the new contractor to address the work performed by Vermont Construction Company.“It’s certainly not what we envisioned when we bought a 2,400 square foot house,” he said.Read the story on VTDigger here: Lawsuits accuse Vermont Construction Company of incomplete work, unjustified charges.