Three more Santa Rosa area couples sue Tulare contractor rebuilding homes burned in Tubbs fire

Three more couples who survived the fierce 2017 Tubbs fire sued an embattled Central Valley construction company that signed contracts with roughly 40 Santa Rosa-area homeowners to rebuild their houses destroyed in the inferno.

The disgruntled customers, from Coffey Park and Larkfield neighborhoods, filed civil lawsuits Thursday and Friday in Sonoma County Superior Court against Chiaramonte Construction & Plumbing Inc. The suits accused the contractor of fraud, negligence, breach of contract and negligent supervision and accounting.

Last week, in response to separate customer complaints against the company, California’s Contractors State License Board opened a preliminary investigation of the Tulare contractor, and posted on its website eight violations it thinks the company might have ?committed. Those potential infractions include fraud, abandoning a construction project and lack of reasonable diligence.

Meanwhile, the fresh suits came a week after Chiaramonte Construction became the first contractor working on the ongoing rebuild after the fire two years ago to be sued by its customers.

The Sonoma County District Attorney’s Office, which also received complaints about the contractor, is working “in conjunction” with the state contractor licensing board, Assistant District Attorney William Brockley said earlier this month.

On Thursday, Juan and Silveria Pulido filed a complaint against the builder, alleging fraud and negligent misrepresentation. After losing their home on Crestview Drive in Coffey Park, the Pulidos signed a contract with Chiaramonte, and paid the contractor a deposit of $62,902 on Nov. 2, 2018 to build a new house. After months passed “with no work and no communication about the project,” according to the complaint, the Pulidos sent Chiaramonte a notice of termination on May 16.

“There was no contact with them unless we reached out to them,” Maggie Pulido said in an interview. The reply, she recalled, was always, “Two weeks. You guys are next.”

As the months went by, she said, Chiaramonte officials would invite them to “choose your paint, pick out your shingles, pick out your door knobs.” Meanwhile, she said, there was no movement on building their house.

Chiaramonte Construction did not respond to numerous requests for comment regarding the latest suits against the company. Earlier this month, a company official told The Press Democrat disgruntled customers’ allegations against the family’s construction company are “false.”

On Friday, two of the three couples filed a suit jointly against Chiaramonte. One couple, Kim and Andy Guy, had signed a contract in 2018 with the contractor to rebuild their house on Brighton Drive in Larkfield. The other couple, Jeffrey and Joann Anderson, had their house on Kerry Lane in Coffey Park torched in the Tubbs fire. The allegations in that suit include breach of contract, fraud and negligence.

Like the Pulidos, the Andersons were deeply frustrated by a lack of communication from their contractor.

“We would email, email, email, and get no response,” Joann Anderson said in an interview, “except when they needed money.”

“They kept asking for more money, even when the work hadn’t been done,” she recalled. The first two times that happened, the Andersons paid. A month ago, she said, Chiaramonte requested a third draw from their bank account - “another 10%. And we just said, ‘You’ve gotta be kidding me.’”

In all, they’ve paid the builder $170,000, according to the complaint, nearly a third of the cost of a house on which little work has been done.

“There’s a foundation,” Anderson said, “and some subflooring. And for what little they’ve done, they made mistakes. They put the electrical panel in the wrong place.”

“We won’t have enough to rebuild,” she said, unless they recoup their money from Chiaramonte, “or burn up our life savings.”

The Guys’ house is about 60% finished, although much of the construction that’s been completed, according to the complaint, “was not completed correctly.”

The alleged mistakes include roof trusses installed backward, sheet rock installed over electrical boxes, roof shingles improperly changed from tile to composition, a front porch poured improperly three times, and dormer windows that did not open and close.

Asked about delays and problems with the Guys’ house in an interview two weeks ago, Anthony Chiaramonte, a project manager and son of the company’s president, shifted blame to them.

“All those issues about their house standing still - that’s all on them,” he said.

The Guys wanted dormers above the garage they could actually walk into and operate. What they ended up with were ornamental dormers that don’t actually function.

“They failed to have that design in their (building) plans,” Chiaramonte said. “Why should we be forced to fix something you should have caught in the design process? As the builder, that is not our fault.”

The allegations in the Pulidos’ complaint this week are similar to those in the first suit brought by other area fire survivors against Chiaramonte. Last Friday, Robert Richner and his wife, whose Mark West Estates home burned in the fire, sued the builder.

They paid the company $124,634 on March 4 with the understanding that work on the foundation of their house would begin 45 to 60 days later. Shortly after receiving that check, the contractor pushed back the start date, informing them construction would begin within 120 days, according to their complaint.

On March 19, the couple canceled the contract with the contractor, which has not returned their $124,634. “Recovering from the fires has been so hard on people as it is,” Richner said in a recent interview. The “debacle” with Chiaramonte, he said, “has been salt in the wound.”

Attorney Rich Freeman, the Santa Rosa lawyer representing all four couples who have sued Chiaramonte Construction, said: “They’ve already been through an incredibly traumatic experience. This is the last thing any of them needed.”

You can reach Staff Writer Austin Murphy at 707-521-5214 or austin.murphy@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @Ausmurph88