A Collin County district judge has ordered a Dallas-area roofing company and its owner to pay $1.52 million in civil penalties and to put $500,626.64 into an account to repay customers, after neither one answered a consumer protection lawsuit brought by the state.
The final judgment and permanent injunction against Rubinsky Roofing LLC was signed Oct. 5 in Collin County's 429th District Court. Attorney General Ken Paxton's office announced it Thursday.
A default judgment
The state sued the company and its owner in May. According to the judgment, both were served over the summer, the company through the Texas Secretary of State and the owner through court-approved substituted service at a Quorum Drive address in Dallas, and neither filed an answer by the deadlines in August and September.
Under the rules for a no-answer default, the court treated the state's material allegations as admitted.
The judge found 27 violations of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, five of them involving customers who were 65 or older. The findings include false or misleading statements about whether roofs needed repair or replacement and taking contracts or payment without starting or finishing the work on time.
The penalty breaks down to $10,000 for each of the 27 violations and an added $250,000 for each of the five involving older customers. The court split it into $760,000 for the company and $760,000 for the owner and also awarded the state $53,440 in attorney's fees.
How repayment is supposed to work
The order gives the defendants 30 days to fund the restitution account and to list every Texas customer who paid them, how much they paid and whether the work was finished, partly done or never started. Insurance money paid on a customer's behalf counts toward what was paid.
The attorney general's Consumer Protection Division is to contact affected customers within 15 days of getting that list. Customers then have 90 days from the notice to send proof of what they paid and lost. The defendants owe restitution even if claims add up to more than the amount in the account.
