On October 11, 2007, our attorney, Courtney Caparella, filed a Demand for Arbitration on the behalf of Brian and Angela Oswald and Constance Smith with the American Arbitration Association (also known as AAA) (http://www.adr.org/). This filing was done using an online method in which there is no printed copy for us to attach for your viewing. We paid an initial filing fee of $4,250.00 (check #4362).
On April 3, 2008, we received a letter from our Courtney Caparella which included an invoice from AAA for the arbitration process. On April 14, 2008, we paid an additional $4,750.00 (check #4637) to AAA which was for the case service fee and our share of the neutral compensation deposit coving 2 days of hearing time and 1 day of study for the arbitrator.
The arbitrator assigned to us was Thomas R. Yocum, an attorney with Benjamin, Yocum & Heather, LLC. (http://www.byhlaw.com/). It was revealed that Mr. Yocum in some past event knew and/or had a relationship with Meyer Builders Douglas Homes, Ltd and/or its representatives. In order to keep any unbias views out of the arbitration, we opted to have Mr. Yocum replaced with an arbitrator who knew neither us nor Meyer Builders Douglas Homes, Ltd or any of its representatives. We were informed that a new arbitrator would be assigned to our case.
On July 15, 2008, we received a letter from our attorney regarding our arbitration status. Our hearts sunk as we read the letter (see attached). In summary, because we decided we didn't want to use Mr. Yocum as our arbitrator, we were being told that we would have to pay arbitration fees again if we wanted our case to continue. Our original arbitration fees from the first payment made on April 14, 2008, could not be refunded to us until the arbitration was completed and even then, we would be refunded our full amount (see letter for entire explanation from AAA). Knowing that we had no choice in this matter if we wanted to continue, we paid an additional $3,920.00 (check #4797) on September 2, 2008.
The second arbitrator assigned to our case was D. Scott Gurney, an attorney with Frost, Brown & Todd, LLC (http://www.frostbrowntodd.com/). With a new arbitrator in place, we had hopes that our case would finally progress since it had already been one year ago that we initially filed and nothing seemed to have happened. Constant delays by Meyer Builders Douglas Homes, Ltd. seemed to keep our case from moving forward or in any direction.
In June 2009, we were informed that Meyer Builders Douglas Homes, Ltd. had lawsuits filed against them by banking institutions which resulted in judgments against them for several million dollars. These cases were filed in 2008 and they were able to get their cases heard by 2009 because they were handled within the court system. The prospect that Meyer Builders Douglas Homes, Ltd. would likely have to file bankruptcy set our attorney into action.
After several phone conferences and face-to-face meetings, a motion to take our case back into the court system was signed by Judge Dennis S. Helmick. Because of this, we were now able to stop the arbitration process and request our filing fees back. At this point, we had paid a total of $12,920.00 to AAA for an arbitration process that never happened.
Because of the letter we received dated July 14, 2008, about AAA holding onto our money until arbitration was done, we were afraid that they would not return our money. So, on September 17, 2009, we emailed Courtney showing the total we had paid to AAA and documentation to back it up.
We received an email from Courtney on October 6, 2009, stating that AAA was only going to refund us $7,511.00 of the $12,920.00 paid (they were keeping $5,409.00) which shocked us to say the least. We couldn't understand how they could claim almost half of what we paid when nothing ever happened in our case after filing almost two years ago. Courtney stated she would contact Katie Seder with AAA to get an itemized list showing payments and expenses they were claiming on our case. On October 7, 2009, we received the email from Courtney showing Mr. Yocum and Mr. Gurney's expenses (see attached documents). The amounts shown on these documents do not add up to $5,409.00. We are currently disputing this with AAA. The outcome is still unsettled as of October 9, 2009.
*** Please note that this section will be updated as the Arbitration process progresses. Please feel free to return to our website periodically for updates. We will be posting new developments with our case as the Arbitration process evolves.