Texas Lawn Maintenance

We hired him in Feb, 2016 for drainage. He broke some sprinkler lines that he was unable to fix. The pipes kept breaking he said because of the water pressure. He wanted to pour concrete around the pipes to hold them together. We would not allow that so he tried zip-tying them together. We had to hire another sprinkler company to fix it. They fixed it in a short amount of time. Then we hired him to do landscaping and replace our fence. The fence at the back of the property was put up but not completed because he said he needed room to bring in a huge tree. We also paid him $2300 on 3/28/16 to replace the side fence. This was half down so he could get material. He said he would start fence the next day. He went to our bank and cashed check then told us he couldn't start fence until Friday, May 1st. The side fence was taken down and to this day, April 19th, we still don't have a fence up. WE gave him the money 22 days ago. We have had to hire an attorney to get a judgment on him. The attorney contacted him on 4/14/16 and told him he needed to have everything completed by 4/17/16. James said he needed two extra days because of rain and promised attorney he would have everything completed by 5:00 on 4/19/16. That is today. There has been no communication from James since attorney's initial contact with him on 4/14/16. James is not answering calls or texts from attorney or us. He also left our backyard swimming pools exposed for three days. Our neighbor's pool was also exposed. This is a residential neighborhood with children living nearby. We had to ask him 4 times to please put some barrier up. He finally put up some flimsy orange plastic netting. Besides the $2300 we gave him for the last section of fence, we will have to hire another fence contractor to put the side fence up and complete the back fence and replace the split and defective fence pickets. Also you can see daylight between the pickets all the way down the fence. And on the big tree we brought in that he was paid to plant, he just dropped it in a hole. He said he needed to fix some broken pipe and needed the rest of the money so he could go to Lowes and get parts he needed to fix it before he could finish planting. WE argued that he would get the rest of the money after the tree was planted. He got angry and said that was b******** and didn't have the money to buy the parts. So in order to get our tree planted, we gave him the rest of the money, $585. He went straight to our bank and cashed it and we haven't seen him since. WE have also filed a complaint with the Texas Contractor Licensing Board.