Laughlin's General Contracting

At the time we lived in Elmira, New York and had purchased a farm house in Jasper, New York. We didn't know anyone is Jasper, but found Laughlin's advertisement in the Penn-E-Saver and contacted him to do work on the farm house. The first job he did was put a vented roof with new soffits on the house. We next contracted him to replace a part of the stone foundation that was crumbling. He moved his tools into the house, jacked up the floors, and went to work. He next filed a report with New York state police that someone had broken into the house and stolen his tools. I had my tools and thousands of dollars of building materials in the house, but all the thieves stole were his tools? My wife insisted on reimbursing him for his loss since he didn't have insurance and gave him $250 which he used to take his family on vacation. While he was gone, the side of the house was still jacked up and two of the support beams cracked under the weight of the house. If I hadn't gone out to the house, found the damage, lowered the jacks and taken the weight off the beams, the back of the house could have collapsed. When he returned from vacation he saw the damage and claimed that it was there before. I replaced two main beams in my floor. At the time I have a 24 foot travel trailer. He said he would reall ylike a trailer like that to take his family camping. We worked out a deal to give him the trailer for the work he was doing. Later, I got a call from him telling me there was a bullet hole through the wall. There was no hole when he took the trailer. I told him I'd come out to inspect the hold, but he wouldn't tell me where he was living. In the mean time he started coming out to my home in Elmira after I had gone to work to have morning coffee with my wife to discuss "construction details" with the farm house. Next he claimed that his truck had broken down and wanted us to buy him a new one ton work truck and he would work the cost off. I critisized his work and he came to my house one evening and yelled at my wife, "Nobody talks to me that way! Where is he?" My wife explained to him that I wasn't home, I was at karate class. He left. I called him the next day and offered to drive to his house so we could..."discuss" this matter but he would tell me where he lived. I invited him to my house, but he wouldn't come. A few days later I received a note from Doug telling me that he had a garage roof to replace and that he considered our contract complete, even though the job was only 80% complete. I hired another contractor to finish the job. Turns out the cinder block foundation Doug was putting up was nine degrees out of vertical. I thought the ordeal with Doug was over, wrong. i hired another contractor to do some interior work on my ceiling and he found that when Doug installed my vented roof, he ran the plywood flush at the top and air couldn't get through to the roof vent. Futher more, he didn't vent the soffits, they were solid wood. I had no air circulating through my arrit all. Bottom line, I wouldn't hire this yahoo to work on my doghouse!