"The Elephant Man" (Baton Rouge)
January 25, 2010
Octavia McCoy White
January 28, 2010A local contractor has accused Terrebonne Parish of enacting a “racist plot” that defrauded his company out of thousands of dollars. Horace Johnson, owner of Blue Carpentry Construction Company, has taken his charges to several bodies of the federal government after a trial in Houma’s district court left him feeling abused.
The dispute stems from a Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) contract awarded to Johnson’s company to repair a home of on Houma’s East Side.
The parish terminated the contract because Johnson’s work went past deadline, but Johnson said work could not be completed because of an unusual number of rainy days, for which he was not given credit.
The courts sided with the parish, and eventually took back much of the partial payment given to Johnson for the work he had completed. Now, Johnson is saying that he is owed arbitration and his civil rights were violated in court.
To plead his case to the public, Johnson held a press conference last Friday in front of government towers.
“The parish colluded and concocted in a kangaroo court to defraud Mr. Johnson out of a lot of money,” said Rev. Raymond Brown, a civil rights activist with Love and Power Outreach Ministry in New Orleans at the press conference.
Johnson also said he has taken his case to the Louisiana State Supreme Court, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, the FBI New Orleans Field Office, and civil rights leaders Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rev. Al Sharpton.
Although he represented himself in court, Johnson claims that his arguments were ignored, and that the homeowner, and a key witness for his case, was not summoned to court because she was mistaken for dead.
Gladys Picou Joseph, whose home was repaired by the CDBG contract, is still alive, but never appeared in court.
Joseph was reached by phone and said that she felt Johnson had done an “alright” job, but didn’t remember who finished the work on her house.
“Well, see I don’t know about all that because I’m old and all that. I can’t worry with things like that,” said Joseph. “I’m not well but I’m still living, thank the lord.”
Johnson believes much of his troubles stem from the fact that he is black.
“In the contract, it is written that you cannot discriminate against people. On the other hand, my constitutional rights were denied because the contract clearly says it must be arbitrated. Now if that would have been a [white] building contractor, they wouldn’t have never ever went and got no keys from his subcontractor and then gone in and changed the locks on the door, and then be lied to that you’re going to get a chance to inspect the house, and never get a chance to do so. That would not ever, ever happen to those guys,” said Johnson.
Although there is a clause for arbitration in the contract, Johnson is no longer owed arbitration and has no further legal recourse, said former assistant parish attorney Danna Schwab.
“You either do arbitration or you do a lawsuit. You file one claim or the other, but he filed a lawsuit, so there is no arbitration claim. It’s either or,” said Schwab.
According to Schwab, who represented the parish in the lawsuit, the appeals deadline for the Johnson trial has already lapsed, and Johnson cannot legally sue for any case involving that contract.
“Once it’s been decided by a court of law, and you don’t appeal, that issue is over,” said Schwab. “You can’t bring it again in a different forum.”
The original CDBG contract stated that Blue Carpentry Construction should perform $39,900 worth of repairs in 45 days in the summer of 2005. The contract was extended five days for change orders and another two days for inclement weather. Johnson, however, said that it rained nearly every day of the contract, and that he called in to report the rain.
According to a letter provided by Johnson, Schwab wrote that Johnson either called at the end of the day or days later to report rainouts. She also claimed that inspectors found his contractors working on the house when they had claimed rain days.
Court documents show that Johnson was paid for 58 percent of the contracts value, which is equal to the amount of work parish inspectors said he completed. An additional $11,965 in repairs had to be made by the parish to complete the contract. Schwab then sued Johnson for the remainder of the repairs with interest, even though his company was never paid to do that work.
Schwab won a total of $14,033 after interest and fees, which had to be seized from a Blue Carpentry Construction checking account by court order.
“Luckily it was only $12,000 bucks…. The plaintiff is getting off relatively cheap on this because it certainly would be very reasonable for the parish to have spent, you know, $30 or $40,000 to do the work to get this house up to snuff,” said Judge Randall Bethancourt, who tried the case, according to court documents.
Johnson had also taken out a $13,435 loan against the contract to pay his employees, for which he provided documentation. With most of the money Johnson was paid taken back through the court, that loan has become difficult to repay, said Johnson.
“I haven’t been working, I’ve been trying to keep my company afloat and pay the insurance,” said Johnson. “This thing has dried me out of my money. It’s been really rough, man. I can’t trust nobody because they’ve been scamming me.”
