LBB Construction & Excavation

In February of 2009 we had some warm weather which melted the thin layer of ice and snow off the driveway. With the driveway clear, I could see that the driveway section W. Martin had put in had cracked in several places. I called him that evening (Wed, 2/10) and he said he would come out Saturday and look at it. I waited all day Saturday, nobody showed up or called. I called Saturday night, nobody answered so I left a message that I would be home all day Sunday. I waited all day Sunday, nobody showed up or called so I called again Sunday night and said we needed to get this resolved. I was going to wait until Wednesday to call again, but when I got home from work on Tuesday there was a message on my machine. I called W. Martin back, he said he had come out Monday morning and looked at the driveway. First, he said the cracking and heaving were ?normal? and that all cement did it. I told him that the cracking and heaving were the problems I paid him $3000.00 to fix, if he couldn?t fix them because they?re ?normal? then why did he take my money? I pointed out that he said the drainage system would fix the heaving, but he only kept repeating that it was normal. He then said the cracking was my fault since I insisted over his objections that he attach the driveway to the front of the garage. This is not true, we never had a conversation about cracking being caused by attaching the driveway to the garage. The only time we talked about attaching the driveway was when I pointed out that the original contractor attached the driveway to the garage because he was concerned that the driveway would creep down the hill to my garage over time and ride up over the front edge of my garage floor. I assume this seemed reasonable to W. Martin since he attached it. Finally, W. Martin said that he would have guaranteed the work if he hadn?t attached the driveway to the garage, but since he did he wouldn?t guarantee it. He certainly never mentioned this to me when he was doing the work. I told W. Martin that I would be taking him to court, that?s where our conversation ended. I took W. Martin to small claims court on 5/26/2009. The judge disclosed that he was a friend of W. Martin and gave me the option of choosing another judge, however I wanted to get the whole thing over with and foolishly decided to go ahead. The judge took everything W. Martin said at face value, while discounting anything that would help my case. For example, there is a large piece of cement that popped out because W. Martin didn't put in an expansion joint between the new and old slabs. When I pointed this out, W. Martin said, "something must have hit it" and the judge said nothing. However, when I pointed out where an estimate I got from another contractor mentioned the poor workmanship, the judge ignored it. In the end I won a judgement of $1200 dollars, which I will put toward a competent contractor to fix this mess.