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Beware Of Pool Sharks

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CLUMPS OF BUBBLES POP SPO-radically to the surface as a young man in a wet suit pushes a clumsy sanding machine across the bottom of the swimming pool. The clear water darkens gradually, clouded by particles of azure plaster. Through the murk, Diane Graff can see patches of brown where the finish seems torn away, exposing the gun-ite beneath. Finally, the frogman splashes to the surface, wrenches the regulator from his mouth, and declares the job hopeless. Graff remembers his terminal diagnosis: “Someone did a terrible job on this pool. You’ve got some problems.”

To Graff, a personnel representative with American Airlines, the news was hardly surprising. For almost six months, she and her husband, Tom, who works in food service at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, had watched their dream of owning a swimming pool evaporate into a back yard nightmare. They had seen careless workmen slosh cement onto the newly pebbled decking, put tile over fill jets, forget an anti-siphon valve required by city code, and blithely drain 5,000 gallons of water into a neighbor’s yard. They had stood by helplessly as the kidney-shaped pond warped and buckled and crazed and leaked. Then, they had stared in despair as the final coat of plaster slithered down the sides of the pool, piling up on itself in the bottom until, as Graff recalls, “it looked like a swimming pool with cellulite.” Of course a frogman with a sander couldn’t fix it. That their contractor would suggest such a thing seemed a crazy, gratuitous insult.

But for Tom and Diane Graff, the worst was yet to come. It arrived by certified mail a few weeks later-a notice that a lien would be filed against their property because the pool contractor had not paid one of his subcontractors. More notices followed from other subcontractors exercising their right, under the state’s mechanics’ lien law, to collect from the property owner when the master contractor stiffs them. Though the work was shoddy, though the pool in the tiny back yard of their Grapevine home was, in fact, never finished, the Graffs faced a bitter choice. They could pay a second time for work supposedly covered in the $16,000 contract they had financed with a home improvement loan. Or they could accept liens that would cloud their title and render the modest tract house virtually impossible to sell. Says Diane Graff, “When we got that first letter, we freaked out.”

As the Graffs discovered during months of wrangling with a Bedford-based construction company called Blue Fountain Pools, Texas homeowners who simply long for a cool summer dip often find themselves immersed, instead, in rank consumer quicksand. With no licensing requirements, no bonding, and no effective regulation from city or state consumer protection agencies, swimming pool builders have become the snake oil salesmen of the Eighties. In an industry that takes in an estimated $70 million a year in the Metro-plex-Richardson alone issued almost $2.9 million worth of home pool permits in 1986-fly-by-night operators remain the exception to the rule, but not by much.

“This industry is growing fast, and we’re going through the out-of-control strains of growth,” worries Robert Baxter Jr., president of Texas Waterworks Pools and Spas in Carrollton and a member of the Alexandria. Virginia-based National Spa and Pool Institute. “I’m fearful that, if we do not harness it now, there won’t be any more legitimate businessmen in this industry in a few years.”

“Yes, this is a problem industry,” agrees Clyde Farrell, chief of the Texas Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division. “We are receiving a growing number of complaints, and we do what we can to control it. But there are a lot of complaints that never get resolved.”

In the Dallas regional office of Farrell’s division, assistant attorney general Stephen Gardner collects fat folders of complaints about pool builders. One file relates the troubles of a Lewisville couple who anted up a $10,000 down payment for work that never progressed beyond a hole dug in the back yard. Another includes documents from a family who spent $22,000 for a pool in which plaster peeled off before work was complete. A Wylie woman seeks help in recovering $425 in earnest money she plunked down before learning the pool company’s reputation was so bad that her bank would not lend money for that builder’s work. Dozens more describe pool rip-offs in Dallas, Mesquite, Garland, Piano, you name it.

“While the law provides that our office can sue for damages against the company, such action would not be the right use of our resources,” says Gardner. In fact, Gardner found no evidence that the AG’s office in Dallas has ever moved against a pool builder. And in Austin, Farrell uncovered only four enforcement actions against pool builders anywhere in Texas in the Eighties. The attorney general’s office, the principal agency empowered by the state Deceptive Trade Practices Act to attack consumer fraud, lacks time and money to pursue swimming pool swindlers, says Farrell. Like the Dallas County District Attorney, the Better Business Bureau, and others with little or no enforcement authority, the AG merely amasses complaints and files them.

Diane Graff also gathers files. Since her fruitless battles with Blue Fountain Pools began in January 1986, she has become the ringleader of a network of a couple of dozen angry consumers in the same boat. Today, her briefcase overflows with contracts, notes, letters, and receipts documenting the disappointments of Dallas-area families who contracted with Blue Fountain and feel they got soaked.

Among the names in Graff’s files is that of Linda Raines, who shelled out $14,600 to Blue Fountain Pools in her first big splurge after a divorce. Today, Raines says her pool is lovely except that the back end sticks up out of the ground and the tropic stone deck is not the right color. What troubles her most, though, are two mechanics’ liens recorded at the county courthouse, one for $821 owed to a tile contractor and one for $380 due a steel and plumbing company. “I wanted to do something about this mess,” says Raines, “but I couldn’t because I wasn’t financially able to get a lawyer. It probably wouldn’t have been worth the money anyway.”

Lisa Gold, a Hurst businesswoman, fumes about her pool, too. It is a $47,000 extravaganza complete with sunken grottoes, a twelve-foot waterfall, and a poolside bar where guests perch on submerged stools while sipping scotch. Gold claims she paid for features Blue Fountain did not deliver. She also laid out several thousand dollars, she says, to correct shoddy stonework and faulty equipment. A $2,000 lien, placed by Blue Fountain’s unpaid plastering contractor, remains on record at the Tarrant County Courthouse. “We spent so much on this pool, and it didn’t work out the way it was supposed to,” says Gold. “I enjoy it, but I’m so angry.”

George and Marilyn Darby liked the $15,000 oval pool Blue Fountain built behind their Grand Prairie home so much that they recommended the company to others. However, their enthusiasm ebbed when an unpaid subcontractor filed a $998 mechanics’ lien against their property. With a lawyer’s help, they finally won a lien release and refinanced the house. But Marilyn Darby now says, “I feel bad that I recommended Blue Fountain to two or three people who saw the construction in our yard and stopped to admire the work. I hope they didn’t take my advice.”

The litany continues. Jim and Marlene Duffy in Garland. Charles Armstrong in Lewisville. Jim Jeffrey in Piano. Chester Rubin in Grapevine. And more. Throughout the Metroplex are homeowners who still taste bile at the mention of Blue Fountain Pools. Like Diane and Tom Graff, they anticipated the joy of owning a swimming pool and experienced, instead, the waste of thousands of extra dollars, weeks of time, and months of worry and frustration.

“Besides nine months that gave me an ulcer,” says Diane Graff, “we had two liens totaling almost $2,000 placed on our home. We received five intent-to-lien letters that added up to $4,000. We paid for contractors’ services we never got. We paid for a warranty we’ll never see. And we paid $1,500 more in cash for our pool than we had contracted for.”

And now that Diane Graff can finally gaze out the patio window onto a pool much like the one in the ad that drew her to Blue Fountain, she says, “It’s been such a headache, I don’t even like it.”



YOU’D LIKE EUGENE ZAUSS IF you met him. You’d feel instantly comfortable with this slight, fiftyish fellow with graying hair, a trim mustache, and reading glasses depending from a chain about his neck. His handshake is firm and friendly. He looks you directly in the eye as he speaks in a voice softly accented by the old world of Southern Europe, perhaps Greece. His manner, at once enthusiastic and sincere, is reassuring. If you signed a contract with his company. Blue Fountain Pools, you’d feel you could trust him.

Even now, with Blue Fountain collapsing under the weight of irate customers and unpaid bills, Zauss retains a healthy measure of personal esteem. Customers chafing at mechanics’ liens against their homes usually give him the benefit of the doubt, saying he is not dishonest but simply inept in business management. Subcontractors with thousands of dollars in unpaid invoices to Blue Fountain moldering in their file drawers characterize him as just another victim of a downturn in the local economy. They emphasize that Zauss is not anything like the real crooks they often meet in the swimming pool business.

Many a morning, these days, Zauss wheels his 1985 Cadillac into the muddy parking area in front of Andrews Gunite, just off the Interstate 35 service road in Carroll-ton. He stops to drink coffee and chat with proprietor Dale Andrews, a former subcontractor for Blue Fountain Pools. Though Zauss owes the gunite firm some $30,000 he will probably never pay, Andrews enjoys his company.

“] have no doubt that if Gene [Zauss] came into the money tomorrow, he would pay me,” says Andrews. “What happened to Zauss could have happened and is happening to a lot of people in all types of businesses. He just got into trouble with advertising, office, and other business expenses and couldn’t pay his dues.” Riffling $103,000 in unpaid bills owed him by a local pool company that folded up shop and disappeared recently. Andrews adds, “I have a problem with the guys who owe me and just left town. Gene didn’t take me money and run.”

Jerry Reber of Southwest Steel and Plumbing feels much the same way. Though he claims Zauss owes him “over $10,000″ for his work on the Graff pool alone, Reber contends Blue Fountain typically has been among the more reputable pool contractors in the Dallas area. ’As far as Zauss goes, I personally feel he just got into some bad business practices and was a victim of poor management.’”

Zauss, of course, agrees. Though he refuses to discuss his affairs in detail, Zauss portrays himself as an earnest businessman overwhelmed by financial problems as a shrinking Dallas economy caught him in its squeeze, He genuinely struggled to satisfy customers and keep accounts current, he says. The numbers simply didn’t work.

Though escalating costs, discount pool prices, and unrealistic construction deadlines apparently were among his problems. Zauss also claims pool buyers frequently brought on their own troubles. Often, he says, customers demanded extras not in the contract, withheld payments until they considered work satisfactory, or complained incessantly about minor defects. For example, the builder dismisses Diane Graffs complaints about the uneven, dimpled plaster surface inside her pool. “Nearly every pool has little ripples in the plaster at the bottom,” he says. “The ripples are more visible in the light.” Zauss and his friends point to Blue Fountain’s record as evidence of the builder’s good intentions. Unlike other pool companies they could name-and they most often name Blue Texas Pools, sued for consumer fraud by the attorney general in 1985- Zauss’s business operated on the up-and-up for most of its corporate life.

Incorporated by Eugene Zauss, his wife, Shirley, and two associates in June 1983, Blue Fountain did. in fact, build a reputation as one of the Dallas area’s leading pool companies. When good times meant construction of new homes and improvements to older ones, customers swarmed in, attracted by newspaper ads depicting a smiling family splashing happily in the cool blue of a Blue Fountain pool. The Better Business Bureau and other local agencies recorded occasional complaints, but the company’s record was considered good by the standards of the industry.

By mid-1985. Blue Fountain had expanded beyond its home office in Bedford to operate branches in Dallas. Duncanville, Richardson, Burleson, and Arlington. Complaints began to build. According to a former manager of the Duncanville office, “it was hard to find satisfied customers to recommend the company to other customers. It was a shell game.”



L LATE IN 1985, BLUE FOUNTAIN advertised an off-season winter special, promising twenty-one-day pool construction at reduced prices, The Graffs and at least two dozen other buyers signed up. By spring of 1986, many felt they had been stung. With pools not completed or unsatisfactory, they repeatedly called one or another of Blue Fountain’s offices only to be put off or ignored. Then, one by one, the offices closed. Calls to Zauss’s home in Colleyville went unanswered. Even aggressive complainers like Diane Graff, who marched to Zauss’s door, say they pried loose nothing more than vague promises.

As complaints from customers grew more vehement, Zauss disappeared from Dallas for a time. Reports were that he was in Florida, working for a pool contractor somewhere near Disney World. Through the summer of 1986, neither Blue Fountain Pools nor Eugene Zauss could be found by those who felt they had a score to settle.

Zauss returned from Florida late last year and filed a voluntary petition for personal Chapter 11 bankruptcy on December 1. In January, the state of Texas revoked Blue Fountain’s corporate charter for nonpayment of capital slock taxes. Then, Zauss notified a federal judge that he intended to seek corporate bankruptcy within the next few months. Diane Graff heard from her attorney that a suit seeking damages from Zauss or Blue Fountain would be pointless because of the bankruptcy proceedings. She and other furious customers would simply have to eat their losses.

Zauss, now identified by an employee as “managing partner” of Nelson Pools in Arlington, claims Blue Fountain fell victim to harsh economic reality. But Larry Murphy, who subcontracted with Zauss to build decks for the Graffs and other Blue Fountain customers, describes a different kind of reality. Pointing to a standard Blue Fountain contract, which required buyers to pay 10 percent down. 30 percent at excavation, and another 30 percent when gunite was pumped in, he calls Zauss’s cash flow “unreal,”

Says Murphy: “That’s 70 percent flowing through his checking account before the pool is even finished. Seventy percent of an average-sized pool is about $14,000. Multiply that by about thirty pools, and Zauss had a helluva checking account. He always paid subs at the early stages, like excavation, so there wouldn’t be any trouble. But once he had that much money in his pocket, he quit paying and a lot of subs quit working.”

No doubt Murphy’s view is jaundiced because he knew Zauss in California, where they both owned businesses before they moved to Texas. On the coast. Murphy says, Zauss established an operating style that he apparently adapted to Texas. He opened a swimming pool business, developed a strong clientele, and then skedaddled, leaving batches of angry customers behind.

In fact, records provided by the Contractors State License Board of the California Department of Consumer Affairs suggest a pattern of rip-off and scam. At least three swimming pool businesses Zauss headed-Eugene Zauss Plumbing, ESZ Inc., and Sunkist Pools-lost licenses under California’s strict building contractor regulation program. Another Zauss company, still operating in San Diego, has revocation action pending. Among charges leveled against the various companies are: “misuse of funds; failure to pay sub within ten days after progress payment; failure to complete project for stated price; withholding money; disregard of plans and specifications or poor workmanship;” and “lack of reasonable diligence.”

California’s claims against Zauss and his companies sound painfully familiar to Dallas-area customers. Many of them believe that California’s crackdown merely drove Zauss to Texas, where the absence of licensing and regulation permits shady contractors to operate without fear that some state agency may be peering over their shoulder. “Some builders don’t even have an office or a telephone,” says one local swimming pool contractor. “They operate out of their home, the car, or from another builder’s office. They go wherever they can make the money.”

Based on their years of experience working with Dallas-area pool contractors, Dale Andrews and Jerry Reber insist Zauss is no worse than any other pool contractor and is better than most. Nodding toward the Southwestern Bell Yellow Pages, which lists 254 swimming pool contractors in the Dallas area, Andrews says selecting a builder is a crapshoot at best. “It’s not a question of who’s crooked or who had good intentions, Your guess is as good as mine as far as the swimming pool industry is concerned. Just open up the phone book and drop your finger.” (See box, page 80.)



MARILYN AND GEORGE DARBY DID everything but call Ralph Nader before they contracted for their swimming pool. They interviewed half a dozen pool companies, matched prices and services, queried friends, probed for complaints at the attorney general’s office, and even prepared lien release forms to protect themselves.

Still, they got bitten by a pool shark.

So did others who heeded the Better Business Bureau motto, “Investigate before you invest.” The Graffs didn’t just dive into buying a swimming pool, but they turned up nothing on Blue Fountain when they called the BBB, the National Spa and Pool Institute, and the attorney general’s office. The Duffys were hosed even though they checked references and comparison shopped among three pool companies. Jim and Ann Jeffrey telephoned consumer agencies, grilled other customers, and compared prices and services offered by several of the larger local builders. But before their $22,000 L-shaped pool with spa was completed last June, Jeffrey says, “I was out about another $5,000 because of Gene Zauss.

“We thought we were being careful in doing a thorough check,” adds Jeffrey, who moved to Piano from Chicago in 1985. “We’d heard the pool horror stories in Texas.”

In fact, horror stories about Texas swimming pool scams have assumed the dimension of legends over the past twenty years. And since the early Seventies, when one contractor bilked forty-two Dallas-area homeowners by skipping town with their money before finishing their pools, builders in the Metroplex have been especially notorious. “That’s one of the worst areas in the country for these types of problems,” says Larry Paullock, senior vice president of the National Spa and Pool Institute,

According to Paullock, who monitors the pool industry for NSPI, the absence of effective regulation or government oversight is a primary reason so many Texas pool buyers take a bath. The top three states in pool construction-California. Arizona, and Florida-all license contractors and enforce stiff rules governing their operations. But Texas, ranked fourth in the number and value of pools built each year, leaves consumers high and dry.

City of Dallas ordinances allow anyone who pays $125 annually for a home repair license to act as a swimming pool contractor. Only after a contractor is twice convicted for operating without one can the city refuse to issue a license. No tests are administered, no background or credit checks are conducted. Thus, as in Gene Zauss’s case, pool contractors whose licenses have been revoked or suspended elsewhere can surface in Texas, no questions asked.

“We see a fencing contractor or a decking contractor or an unemployed person who has never even worked on a pool going into this business,” says Douglas Carlson, president of the North Texas Chapter of the National Spa and Pool Institute. “A decking contractor doesn’t know how to size plumbing or rate the flow of filters and pumps. He doesn’t know how to put in underwater lights that will be safe and not electrocute somebody. He probably doesn’t even know how to work as a contractor because he’s never worked with subcontractors. He’s going to have all sorts of problems.”

In Texas, the Deceptive Trade Practices Act provides virtually the only protection available to consumers. It allows a pool buyer defrauded by contractors to sue for treble damages. But because lawyers are expensive and litigation may take years, few consumers haul their gripes to the courtroom. And as Dallas attorney David A. Witts points out, swimming pool scams are “a problem that the Deceptive Trade Practices Act doesn’t effectively address. In this kind of situation, the damage is done by the initial rip-off. By the time the Deceptive Trade Practices Act kicks in. the pool contractor , has probably disappeared or is insolvent.”

The Deceptive Trade Practices Act empowers the attorney general to file suit against builders who create “a pattern of failure to complete pools or bad workmanship.” In practice, though, slate lawyers rarely move against pool companies. “Swimming pools, frankly, come way down in our list of priorities,” says a complaint analyst in the attorney general’s office, “I’m not saying we would never intervene in a swimming pool matter, but it would have to be a pretty serious case of repeated violations. Our efforts usually are geared more toward the middle class and the poor. A swimming pool is not a necessity like food and clothing.”

Adds Consumer Protection chief Farrell, “You have to understand that our budget is only about seven cents per capita for consumer protection. We have to pick and choose our actions very carefully if we’re going to do any good with that kind of money.”

Even when the state clamps down on a contractor, the pressure is fleeting. Texas can’t yank a license that doesn’t exist. “If we can just get them out of the state, we’re happy,” says assistant attorney general Gardner of dishonest pool contractors. However, he points out, “If they’re out of business and gone, there’s nothing we can do.” Indeed, some pool contractors float from state to state, living off consumers’ front money, never staying put long enough to be towed in by watchdog agencies. Other contractors use bankruptcy as an escape hatch, continuing to operate even while they desert half-completed pools and knee-deep debts to consumers and subcontractors.

According to the Legislative Reference Library in Austin, only one proposal for controlling the swimming pool industry has ever been offered in Texas. That plan was a bill introduced jointly by then-state Senator Oscar H. Mauzy of Dallas and former Rep. Ben Atwell in 1973. The bill called for contractors to post a $25,000 performance bond before beginning work on a pool or face possible fines and jail terms. Consumers soaked by contractors could recoup their losses from the performance bonds. As Mauzy recalls, his bill belly-flopped largely because of opposition from swimming pool builders.

Now, though, pressure for swimming pool construction regulations is swelling from (he center of the same industry that once swamped Mauzy’s proposal. Spearheading a new push to draft pool-building regulations is the North Texas Chapter of the National Spa and Pool Institute. Five months ago, the organization, which lists ninety-two members, began evaluating possible legislative proposals. Two of the five other Texas chapters, those in Fort Worth and Houston, recently joined the effort. “We have such a bad reputation that the reputable people in the industry feel something has to be done,” says Carlson.

Robert Baxter, who heads the NSPI committee weighing legislation, says it leans toward “a two-stage process.” First, perhaps by 1990. will come registration and licensing. Testing and education programs will follow.

“At the least, you should have to take a test to show that you know the basics of building a pool,” says Baxter. “Texas gives a lot of opportunity to do business, but it lets a lot of people operate at the edge of the law. If you can’t operate in an ethical manner, we don’t need you in our industry.”

Baxter’s committee may model its proposals on legislation already passed in other states. In Florida, for example, pool contractors must pass a builder’s exam before they can turn the first shovelful of dirt. They’re also required to prove a combination of college education and on-the-job experience in their field. Florida checks into contractors’ credit histories and financial stability. Licenses can be revoked for such abuses as abandoning pools and stating that subcontractors have been paid when they haven’t.

Some states require pool builders to put up performance bonds. However, Baxter says he favors an “umbrella bond” similar to the state’s financial responsibility requirement for car owners. Contractors will not have to post expensive cash bonds, but they’ll have to pay into a bond plan to cover consumer losses. “If you violate the legislation, the slate will be able to seize the bond,” he explains. “You’ll have to prove you have it before you can pull a permit.”

Carlson. Baxter, and other members of the local NSPI chapter want to change Texas’s image as a haven for unscrupulous pool builders. “It’s nice.” says Baxter, “to walk down the streets and see the first guy you ever built a pool for and he’s not chasing you.”



DIANE GRAFF WORE HERSELF OUT CHAS-ing Eugene Zauss. Last spring, she and her husband camped out in the waiting room of Blue Fountain Pools every morning for a month, demanding that the company fix and finish their pool. Graff spent a week of her vacation trying to nail Zauss and various subcontractors. She stood outside Blue Fountain’s Bedford office and stopped passersby, warning them about the company. “I even thought at times of putt ing a big sign on my car saying ’Don’t buy a Blue Fountain pool’ and leaving it parked outside their store,” she says. “I’m not a troublemaker at heart, but I hated what Gene Zauss did to us.”

Now, instead of looking forward to her first full summer of paddling around in her pool, Graff stares bleakly at the back yard adorned with the climbing roses, crape myrtles, and barberry she planted after the last scrap of concrete was hauled away. “You know, really, honestly.” she sighs, “looking out my back yard makes me sick to my stomach. You look at our pool and you can tell it’s cheaply made. It’s like when you discover you’ve got a lemon car-you just want to take it and push it off a cliff.”

Before You Take the Plunge. . .

Ask each prospective builder for names of former customers. Talk to as many of those customers as possible. Visit one or two and ! see for yourself whether workmanship is up to par.

Request names of subcontractors and suppliers who will work on your pool. Phone several to check the trade reputation of builders you wish to consider.

Check with local and state consumer agencies about the business reputation of a prospective builder. The Better Business Bureau, Chamber of Commerce, the Attorney General’s Consumer Protec- tion Division, and the local chapter of the National Spa and Pool Institute are good places to start.

Deal only with bonded contractors who hold a current business i license from your municipality.

Negotiate a payment schedule that allows you to withhold one- fourth of the total until work is completed satisfactorily. Make sure the contract specifies a completion date. Once the contract is signed, file a copy with the county clerk’s office.

● Before making any payments while work is in progress, demand notarized statements from subcontractors that they have been paid and waive any claims against your property. A clause to this effect in the contract is your best safeguard against mechanics’ liens.

● If your pool is financed through a lending institution, insist that all payment checks be made out to you and the contractor, requir- ing both signatures for cashing.

● Try to be at home while work is being done. Ask questions about things that don’t seem quite right to you.

●If you are unsatisfied with construction as work progresses, refuse to allow additional work and make no further payments. Notify your builder in writing that you intend to cancel your con- tract unless defects are corrected.

. . . But If You Get Soaked

The Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act may allow you to recover your costs and triple damages. An attorney can advise you on the best approach in your particular case. In general, though, these are the steps the act requires:

● Make every reasonable effort to have problems corrected without going to court. Notify the builder of your complaints and ask that defects be repaired.

● Withhold final payment until work is done to your satisfaction.

● Be sure you have good cause for your complaint. If a court decides your complaint is groundless or filed merely to harass, you’ll be stuck with the builder’s attorney’s fees.

● File your suit no more than two years after construction is halted. Except in unusual cases, you may forfeit your right to sue after that.

● At least thirty days before filing a suit, notify the builder, in writing, that you intend to take action. Your letter must include details of your complaint. It also must itemize actual damages and any expenses you incur, including attorney’s fees, if any. If a thirty-day notice would put you beyond the two-year limit, send the letter no more than thirty days after filing suit.

●Expect a settlement offer from the contractor within thirty days after you send your letter. According to the law, a settlement offer is not an admission of guilt.

●Reject the offer if it’s unreasonable. If your suit goes to court, however, a judge may consider the offer an act of good faith on the builder’s part.

If you sue your pool builder and win, Texas law says you may recover actual damages and attorney’s fees plus penalties of up to twice the amount of actual damages less than $1,000 and, if the builder “knowingly” violated the act, three times actual damages more than $1,000.

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