Brett and Tina Hall - How to Stay Out of The Courtroom - PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with Brett and Tina Hall of Roof Consultant Network. You can read the interview below or listen to the podcast. 

Speaker 1: Welcome to Roofing Road Trips with Heidi. Explore the roofing industry through the eyes of a long-term professional within the trade. Listen for insights, interviews, and exciting news in the roofing industry today.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Hello and welcome to another Roofing Road Trips from RoofersCoffeeShop. My name is Heidi Ellsworth and today we have a great podcast, something that I think every roofing professional out there is going to need to understand. In fact, I've been learning a lot in this realm and I'm really excited to bring Brett and Tina Hall with Roof Consulting Network to talk about how contractors can protect themselves and stay out of the courtroom doing everything right up front. So Brett, Tina, welcome to the show.

Tina Hall: Hi.

Brett Hall: Thank you for having us.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: This is something everyone's scared of. We all are scared, that big legal, getting in trouble, and so trying to do everything right upfront I think is so important and I'm really excited to hear what some of your tips are, what some of your advice is. But before we get started, let's start with some introductions. So Tina, if you could, we could start with you, if you could introduce yourself, tell us a little bit of your background and about your company.

Tina Hall: Absolutely. I'm Tina Hall and we started in this industry in early 90s. The company started in the late 80s with Brett's father and we both came on board, Brett first and then and me a little while later. And we've just been in the industry for about a little over three decades as a family roofing company.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And Brett.

Brett Hall: We started in roofing like so many people, I started as a cleanup boy but then did roofs myself and then carried a checkbook and paid bills and supervised and sold. And ultimately Tina and I had bought this company back in the 90s and had continued to grow the roofing company. As it grew and as things happened here in a dynamic market that we're in, we saw a need coming for consulting and we continued to get phone calls and inquiries that would say, Hey, we need more than just consulting. We need you to talk to an attorney or an attorney calls us and needs to ask questions. Basically doing a lot of free work for a little while before we decided that we actually needed to roll that free consulting business into a full consulting business and thus Roof Consulting Network, which has done nothing but grow over the past almost 10 years that we've had Roof Consulting Network, our consulting arm.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And you're out of Texas, right?

Tina Hall: Yes.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: So you're in the perfect spot right in the middle. I mean roofing capital of the world is Texas. You said you started the Roof Consulting Network in 2008, is that right?

Tina Hall: No, let me correct that actually. We've been consulting for over a decade. We did it under the name as Joe Hall Roofing. We saw a need to pull it out to its own entity about four years ago and made it its own viable entity.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I'll just say Joe Hall Roofing has a, I mean I've heard of Joe Hall Roofing over the years, so great company. I think it's so great that you started and really put this together, the consulting part of it because contractors need this so much.

Tina Hall: A lot of contractors don't want to call another roofer per se to come out and help them out. So it's a little less intimidating to a roofer to engage with us at Roof Consulting Network. It also gives us a position to speak as consultants and not in the light of being a roofer.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Right. And an expert witness. I mean that's what happens a lot through your consulting business, right?

Brett Hall: That's right. And we find ourselves working with infrared technological people, metallurgy, attorneys, a lot of attorneys, and we work with appraisers, umpires, contractors. So the idea of the network, manufacturers, suppliers, we find ourselves by saying Roof Consulting Network, we're just saying that we're a network of people and not just us sitting here. We have to rely on a lot of other expertise, meteorologist. We bring those sources to bear work with us and guide this path through what no one wants to do, which is the legal process.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: The legal process is scary and it really is and it's awesome that you understand it and you also understand roofing. You just don't find that very often. Let's jump into that. What are some of the biggest reasons for roofers ending up facing a lawsuit? Because no one wants to, so maybe Brett kind of start, give us some of those reasons that why it happens.

Brett Hall: Sure. And I want to make it very easy to kind of start with because most roofers will agree it's going to be installation issues that's going to land you in hot water. It's going to be installation issues that have the roof leak. It's going to be those hands that we don't necessarily control that are up there on the roof doing the work they do. And so we find most often in suits that we are involved in that it's going to be an installation issue of one type or another. The most common item is definitely going to be flashing. So we all know in roofing that flashing is many things. There's many categories of flashing and these are typically going to be the spots that leak and the spots that are incorrect and that don't meet proper code. The next item is felt in metal edges. Often we find those done wrong time and time and time and time and time again and everyone thinks it's not a big deal.

But when you find yourself in a legal situation and you do things wrong, the first thing they do is get on that, edge of that roof and they lift it up and they see that the felt is done wrong. Now it's like what else is done wrong? That's wrong. So that's the second part. The third part is going to be fasteners, fastener size, fastener location, type of fastener. So these are things that as an expert that's hired by people to go and find them, that we find and that we write up and that we back with the various codes of why it's wrong and how it should have been done correctly.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Brett, I really love that comment about if they find one thing it's just going to lead to another and another and another. It's the details, the details and making sure all the details are correct in the flashings. As contractors have some of these inspections and these things come out, how can they start changing that to really help their crews understand that because it's the crews who are installing it and that may be their own W-2s or maybe sub crews out there.

Tina Hall: Absolutely, and I think that's where a key component as a roofer is supervise your job and not only supervise your job, make sure your supervisor knows what they're doing. They know the proper installation techniques. They're comfortable speaking with the crew that's roofing it, whether it be W-2 or 1099 to get the installation going correctly. Document with photographs as much as you can, review your technical guides from the manufacturer before you start the project, have those on site, visit with the roofers beforehand, making sure everyone's aware of what's to use, make sure, talk to your supply house rep, that you're ordering the right fasteners for that project. They know a lot too. I mean lean on the resources.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And that leads us right into there because I think there are some steps. I know, in fact I know you have steps both in your own roofing business and in your Roof Consulting Network, how to really make sure you're taking the right steps so you don't even have to even get to that point of the courtroom. So Tina, let's start with you on what are, you said just a few of them, but what are the tips for roofers to keep out of the courtroom from the very beginning?

Tina Hall: Absolutely. I think when you're trying, and I think most of the times that people get in trouble are maybe a product that that roofer's not as familiar with. Maybe it's a newer product to the marketplace. So I think that's key. Brett and I both agree, always know your building codes and know your installation techniques, but beyond that, join your local and state organizations. Go to additional trainings, build a group of mentors and peers that when maybe you see things are spinning a little out of control from your job, you have someone you can call and ask, can I pay you to independently inspect this roof project I've done and could you offer some advice of maybe what I should offer to the homeowner or business owner to rectify the situation and stop it before anyone's even got attorneys.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And Brett, I know you have some additional tips on that.

Brett Hall: Well, and what I spend a lot of time with is I'm going to spend time in code. So I do a lot of testing and I do a lot of detailed work in all of the codes. And once you end up in court codes become very important because you have to remember and what we see the most of and what we train a lot for in preparation work is going to be jury trials. And there's nothing like a federal jury trial. So I kind of joke about federal court being the one that you should wear the tuxedo to and state or district court, you should definitely wear a tie and then you kind of come down from there. But formality is you don't have a whole lot of room to make mistakes in federal court and definitely not in state court, but the detail in which you have to deliver the information and provide sourcing of the information.

So when we write this 10 page to 100 page report and we back that with actual factual information from the industry, they call those learned treatises is the legal term. Everyone should quickly know the International Residential Building Code, that's the easy one. That one stands out and that one kind of stands up tall as the one that you should go to first. But under that it does give reference to manufacturing specifications and codes actually being superior codes to the international code. So it says if the manufacturer requires more than this, then you have to follow that. So IR, the International Residential Building Code becomes the base operation, but then you go manufacture. We also find that National Roofing Contractors Organization or NRCA that puts out their technical guidelines and manuals becomes a very, very strong one to follow. And it's very detailed.

So there's a lot in that particular code. Sometimes you can't find something in that code and you may have to come over and you may have to go to the Tile Roofing Institute, you might have to go to the slate manual, you might have to go to the coatings manuals from the industry as a whole, but you might have to go to SMACNA, which is the sheet metal, and actually governs a lot of what roofers touch. All of these codes, they're onerous. There's a lot to them. And you look at them and say, gosh, how can we do everything per these codes. It's not easy. You have to want to do it to the code, you have to train to do it to the code. And when you don't do it to the code, you better know that you didn't do it right and work to fix it quickly. And we all have a tendency to want to kind of say, oh, we didn't do anything wrong. We're right, you're wrong. And defend ourselves when it's like, well maybe we did do something wrong, we have to fix it.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: We've had some amazing construction law, some lawyers on here, and I know you work with some amazing lawyers too, but one of the things we hear all the time is document, document, document. And that documentation has to start with strong contracts. So what is your advice when for contractors, roofing contractors when it comes to the contractors and the documentation throughout the process?

Tina Hall: I see so much when we are representing, whether it be the homeowner, business owner or the roofer, it will say re-roof. Small little words, a quick little tear sheet, that gives you nothing to say whether or not the homeowner really knew what to expect or not. So our favorite is a well worded contract and state what you're doing and do what you stated.

Brett Hall: When we started in this business in the late 80s, we also had a very simple contract and my dad likes to say that we didn't need a contract because a handshake was a contract and people honored that. Now we have a, what do we have? A five-page contract.

Tina Hall: Yes.

Brett Hall: That's basic, basic five page. It's like handing them a phone book, sign this. In everything, it's like this is, I joke because it's like here's what we're doing in one page and the next four pages are what we're not doing and your contract is, it's like tell them what you're not doing because those holes that you miss is where they're going to come back and get you. And good construction attorneys know where to go find these things and say, you didn't do this, you didn't do that and you didn't do that. And if they do get you in front of a jury, remember a jury doesn't know the business of roofing and they're novices and they're going to have some people up there explaining it to them and then make a decision that could cost you a lot of money. So really having that contract that falls back because contract's going to be exhibit A to any jury if it's in there and then someone comes in and explains it.

I also say that although attorneys are learning and we work with some that understand roofing very, very well as a general rule, attorneys don't really, they understand a lot about a lot of different parts of construction, but roofing is not necessarily at the top of their list all the time. And so you're dealing with someone that's going to be explaining to a jury something that they don't even know that well, and it gets frustrating for me to sit on the stand or in the court courtroom and everyone's basically wrong and then it gets snowballing and it's going the wrong direction. And it's like we're going to have to put this back on the right path because we're just going the wrong direction and it's not true and it's not correct. So the idea for the contractor that if you end up in that situation, you have a group of peers called the jurors that really don't know what they're talking about, they only have to learn about.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Right. And so it's important to share the professionalism of the roofing industry and like you said, all that documentation, photos to make sure that people can see what's going on. And I know as we were talking earlier, you were very much about really the goal is not even to get into the courtroom, right, the goal is, is to try to settle and make everyone's life a little bit better. Tina, maybe can you kind of talk about that a little bit?

Tina Hall: That's always our first go-to whether we're representing the homeowner, business owner or the roofer is looking at the solution that can be had to get everybody happy, for the roof to stop leaking or not aesthetically look unpleasing, whatever the situation was that started the conversation and where they went sideways with one another, is finding a viable solution. And a lot of times we'll come in before there's even an attorney on either side. We like to be a resource like call us or call a peer before there's attorneys involved and find a viable solution. But most of the time attorneys are there. And we've had several cases. We just had one in Dallas where we were able to offer a solution for the roofer to offer the business owner to make things right and everybody was happy and they did it and nobody went to court. So minor legal expense and everyone's back and the roof's not leaking and everyone's pleased.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And everybody's happy.

Tina Hall: That's always our goal. Let's get everybody happy outside of the courtroom. Courtroom gets expensive.

Brett Hall: Yeah, the attorneys get expensive and our experience in doing this is bringing, I like to call them three party awards where everyone feels like they've won, but you come in, you bring a neutral viewpoint. We bring experience as roofers and construction people. We do general construction as well, but we bring that to bear and we say, Hey everybody, this is going to get real expensive and if I have the opportunity to talk to both attorneys or both parties, it's like one of you is going to probably lose and it's probably going to be you because of this. And so it pushes the idea of settlements in conciliatory actions pretty quickly. So we like that space the best. We try to get things settled. I know mediation's very popular these days. We support mediation. We have that on our own roofing contracts as the method. It does go quicker.

It keeps costs down and you don't have to wear that tuxedo to mediation, the proverbial joke, but you probably want to as a roofer in mediation or court, you want to go to the closet and get those Sunday clothes out and put those on and look good and show up good and let yourself put your professional foot forward and not necessarily what we all call our roofers foot. We do think that if the roofers will really, really dig into contract and code and training and keeping consistent labor, this is a commercial for our company, but it's also a commercial for many other roofing companies. What's the best thing about Joe Hall Roofing? It's the labor that puts your roof on, the men that work for us. That's the best thing about the company. We keep consistent labor. We've had consistent labor. We're onto another generation of labor at this point.

Well, I think we're actually, we have three generations of labor grandfathers, fathers and grandsons that all work with us and in the office as well as the field and then our children also in the company. And my dad who's deceased, who proudly started the company with his name and we carry on that legacy here at Joe Hall Roofing, and this is just an expansion, but we live in a litigious world as we all know. People love to pick on roofers when it comes to everything being wrong. I've taken phone calls, my toilet doesn't flush. What did you do? Of course.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: We rattled it.

Brett Hall: I mean, it's everything. I hear a noise in my house at night, I've never heard before. What did you do? It's like, it's everything that we get blamed for. And every roofer's going to laugh about that because they know. It's like, yes, we get blamed for everything and so, but hey,

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Well,

Brett Hall: It's being a professional and how to handle it.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And how to handle it. And I think we all realize too that homeowners with the internet and with everything that's going on have become so much more sat on researching, actually looking at the manufacturer specifications, the installation instructions. I just feel like good communication with your customers is so important because they are a lot more educated today. I just have to say, we all know. I mean, my dad was a general contractor. I saw it. We always know there's those certain customers that no matter what you do, they're not going to be happy. Right. They're toilets not flushing right, and it's your fault. What's your advice for contractors when you have that upset homeowner and then you think they're going to be taking you to court? What are some of the things that they should be doing? Tina, why don't we start with you?

Tina Hall: So I mean, again, if you've got a really well written contract, we've had great communication from the start. We've all had those moments outside of our consulting business within the roofing company. You kind of know where it's headed and if you know you've done everything right and you've documented your communication, you've documented your roofing process, sometimes you do have to get an attorney involved or a peer expert involved and it may be a false claim and you've just got an angry homeowner on your hand. And you got to be ready also, I think to stand your ground when you know you're right. You've done all the things right, you roofed it right, you followed code, you followed your contract, and they're just, the toilet's making a funny noise. Nope, no, that sit tight. It'll work itself out.

Brett Hall: And something, and you've talked to this point Tina as well, but backing yourself with your manufacturer. Your manufacturer is an ally and if they know you to be a good contractor that's doing good work and you've done training with them and you're involved in their programs and you work together so to speak, then they're going to be one of your very, very best allies to help you move out of what feels like hot water.

Tina Hall: And I think that ties right in within today's society with what you mentioned of the homeowners have so much access digitally, you're going to see a homeowner print out an installation guide and send it to you. You might find that your homeowner has resourced the local manufacturer reps technical advisor in your area and they've already called him to complain about you. It comes from every direction now with everybody's access online to see a manufacturer, a supply house, someone else, they've already called three other roofers to come inspect your work and say whether it's right or wrong. You've got to really be ready to defend yourself in those instances from all directions. But again, if you've got a great reputation within your peer group, if you've got a great reputation with your manufacturers, your supply houses, they're going to go to bat for you.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And I mean even though we're talking about that small section that you just can never make happy, overall on the bigger picture, great customers and you build those relationships as a roofing company with the homeowners or building owners. So as you're kind of looking at that, I mean, I know you talked about mediation and if a contractor does get into that situation where they're just, they've tried the communication, they know they're right, they've done all the documentation, how do they go about bringing somebody before having to go to court or maybe even before the lawyers, is there a way to have that discussion or that mediation between the roofing company and the homeowner or the consumer?

Brett Hall: There is some space there and we work a lot in that space and in helping bring a path forward, so relying both on our experience in the courtroom and relying on our experience of just doing the job for 35 years now. We know that we can find a path, but a lot of people have signed mediation clauses in their contracts, which is great, and a lot of people that are members of let's say, Better Business Bureau, they have the Pledge to Arbitrate program. And this isn't, it's not always my favorite, although I think it works fairly effectively, a lot of times you have arbitrators who really are, again, not necessarily roofing savvy. So that doesn't work in favor of roofers every time. You might reach out to people that serve in the roles of umpire and those people that do that job tend to know how to reach a resolution or rule in a certain situation between parties A and party B.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: One of the things I really appreciate about both of you is your company represents both homeowners or building owners and roofing contractors. So you have a stellar reputation for being really honest and fair, understanding what's going on. I would love for you just to talk a little bit about that, about working with both sides and how that's made your business even better.

Tina Hall: Integrity is key to us and we want to always be looked upon within our industry as fair. We never wanted to become the representative always for the roofer or the representative always for the building owner or homeowner. We wanted to be looked upon of, oh, if Roof Consulting Networks involved, if Brett and Tina Hall are involved, there will be a fair decision that everyone can be happy with.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Brett, talk a little bit, and we were talking before this about some of your experiences, some of the stories. You said you just had court case that actually came out. You felt really great about. Maybe just share some of those so that the contractors who are doing everything right and who are documenting know that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

Brett Hall: We had a case last week and it took up a couple days and that's pretty standard for a roofing case in court. Fortunately, it did go our way. We were able to use lots of different documentation and really teach the jury about roofing. I like to see myself as a teacher of roofing in a courtroom setting or to a judge, whatever the case may be. These experiences when you do go into the courtroom, and the reason almost no roofer ever wants to do it is that you're seen as an enemy by opposing counsel and they will spend all of their time and their money and their resources to discredit you to try to get you struck and not let you sit on that stand and tell a story. You want to bring forth information from publications and periodicals to the court and they're going to try to strike those.

So it is a mental chess match of wills of other people that you have to work through. I wouldn't say it's fun, but it's a mental setting that you're going to go into and you're really going to climb into your head and know that when I walk in the courtroom, I'm the smartest person about roofing in the courtroom. I don't know a lot about a lot of other things, but when we get to that one spot, we feel strong.

But these cases that we may see, oftentimes we find roofers that work for builders and that relationship goes sour and the builder wants to hit the roofer's insurance policy and the roofer feels like I hadn't done anything wrong. What did I do? We look at this and say, oh, you did one thing wrong, just one. But you can fix that and that doesn't cost 150,000. That costs 5,000. So solutions at the point of the problem or just before the problem, as Tina spoke about earlier, getting those solved for both, that solves it for the contractor and the client and bringing that reasonable cooler heads prevail type setting to where you just have someone that is kind of mediating on site.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That is great. I have to say thank you to both of you. I mean, most of all for what you're doing for the industry and for everyone on all sides to have really fair, strong installations, the roofing respect, as we say at RoofersCoffeeShop. So thank you so much for all of your advice and wisdom. If contractors need help and want to visit with you, get some advice, maybe even get some expert witness support, how do they get ahold of you?

Tina Hall: Absolutely. They can visit our website, which is www.roofconsultingnetwork.com, and that's got resources. I'm usually the first point of contact to kind of get the ball rolling, get the file started, kind of hear your story and see if we're a viable solution for you. And the other thing is, if we are not, I'm going to send you on your way to who is, because I don't want to take your money if I'm not a good solution for you. Maybe I know a different type of an expert or a quicker solution that's more affordable. We're going to push you that way if we're not the right solution for you.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That's awesome. I do want to say this podcast was sponsored by DaVinci Roofscapes because they feel that this is so important to bring this kind of knowledge into the industry. So thank you DaVinci, and thank you Brett and Tina for being here today. What a great podcast. I learned so much.

Tina Hall: Sure thing. We had a great time. Thanks.

Brett Hall: Yes, thanks for having us.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Thank you. And thank you all for listening. You can find more information on this on RoofersCoffeeShop. We'll be following Brett and Tina and make sure, on Joe Hall Roofing. We've seen you on the Coffee Shop. So have a lot more information that direction. Of course, you can visit the DaVinci directory and see some of their articles and what they're tracking too on thought leadership. Please listen to all of our podcasts, all of our Roofing Road Trips under the RLW navigation under podcast, and or on your favorite podcast channel. Be sure to subscribe and set those notifications so you don't miss a single episode. And we'll be seeing you next time on Roofing Road Trips.

Speaker 1: Make sure to subscribe to our channel and leave a review. Thanks for listening. This has been Roofing Road Trips with Heidi from the rooferscoffeeshop.com.