From rooftop to courtroom

Roofing contractor Ralph F. Kline Jr. may call himself “dependable” in his phone book ad, but customer complaints and civil lawsuits filed in Lancaster County Court suggest otherwise.

Kline, who declined to be interviewed for this article, boasts in the ad more than “8,500 satisfied homeowners” since he opened his business, Ralph F. Kline Roofing, Siding & Insulation, in 1968.

Nevertheless, a review of courthouse records conducted by the Intelligencer Journal shows Kline and his business have been the subject of more than 40 civil lawsuits filed in district courts all over Lancaster County dating back to the late 1980s.

Complainants have included not only Lancaster County homeowners, but at least one borough and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

In complaint after complaint, Kline, who runs his business out of his home at 104 S. Spruce St. in Lititz, has been accused of a variety of charges. Some accuse him of shoddy workmanship, some say he refused to honor warranties and others say he accepted money for work his company never started or completed.

Bill Arnold said he called Kline June 11 when he discovered a leak in the slate roof over the garage of his home in Lancaster Township.

“I realized I didn’t know a roof guy,” Arnold said, “so I went to the Yellow Pages. He has a nice big ad, and he specifically mentions slate roof repair, so I was naturally drawn to that.”

A storm was threatening, Arnold said, but Kline said he’d be right over.

“I should have known something was up when he didn’t climb up on a ladder,” Arnold said. “After about three minutes, he says, ‘Yeah, I can take care of this.’ He said, ‘When I’m done, it will not leak; I’ll guarantee you.’”

Kline quoted him a price of $495 for the job, Arnold said.

“He said he could get out the very next week,” Arnold said. “I should have picked up on this right then and there, because it seemed obvious he had his hand out. I said, ‘Oh, do you want paid up front?’ He said, ‘Yeah’ — as if that’s the way it’s done all the time. Feeling great, I stroked him a check and said, ‘See you next week!’”

But by the middle of the following week, which was brutally hot, Kline hadn’t shown up, and Arnold said he called to find out when the work would be done.

“I said, ‘Hey, Ralph, did you forget me?’ He says, ‘Forget you? You can’t do slate work in this kind of weather! My guys would have third-degree burns. As soon as this (heat wave) breaks, I’ll send some guys out.’”

A week later, Arnold’s wife, Nikki, called Kline and asked where he was on the project.

“He yelled at me, ‘What do you mean where am I? Where are you?’” Mrs. Arnold said. “I said, ‘Mr. Kline, I really don’t want to call the Better Business Bureau.’ Before I was finished, he had hung up.”

The Arnolds eventually reached a settlement with Kline, but only after filing a complaint at the office of District Judge Mary M. Sponaugle.

“‘I’m not giving you all your money back, though,’” Mrs. Arnold quoted Kline as saying during their encounter at Sponaugle’s office. “‘I spent some money on the slate roofing tiles.’”

When she asked him for the tiles and a receipt, Kline scowled, she said.

A few days later, Mrs. Arnold said, one of Kline’s workers delivered a number of slate roofing tiles in a cardboard box.

“And this,” she said, presenting a crumpled piece of lined notebook paper upon which was scrawled, “Slate roofing shingles, $230.”

Like the Arnolds, Adamstown residents Virginia McGrath and Martha J. Thomas contacted Kline for roofing work — and eventually wound up in court over it.

Their complaint says Kline agreed to replace 14 roofing shingles on their home and accepted $1,000 up front when the contract was signed Sept. 20, 2004.

The day work was scheduled to begin, Oct. 18, Kline arrived and said “he could not begin (the) job that day, but stated he must have payment in full that day or work would be rescheduled. Plaintiff submitted balance due ($2,015.70), reluctantly,” the complaint says.

The following month, Kline’s workers arrived and assessed the job. Five days later, they installed a Dumpster on the property and began the removal process.

But the “Plaintiff’s yard became the trash stop for many of Kline Roofing’s workers,” the suit says. “Plaintiff began to get complaints from neighbors regarding nails in the road and trash everywhere in their yards.”

On Dec. 15, Kline asked for more money to cover labor and cost of materials, the lawsuit reads: “Plaintiff objected, but was told by defendant she must pay for him to continue.”

In mid-December, McGrath and Thomas say, workers removed a portion of wood from the roof while it was misting outside.

“Shortly it changed to a downpour and they abandoned the area in search of a tarp,” the suit says. “They returned an hour later and covered the space.”

McGrath and Thomas suffered “considerable loss” due to rain saturation, and, on Dec. 28, they filed a complaint in district court.

Two months later, on Feb. 28, 2005, District Judge Nancy G. Hamill awarded them $4,442.20 in damages.

But beating Kline in court and collecting damages can be two different matters. When district judges rule in favor of Kline’s customers, Kline often appeals the cases to Lancaster County Court.

Since the late 1980s, Kline has appealed more than 40 civil lawsuits to Lancaster County Court after losing judgments to clients who have sued him. The actual number of suits filed against Kline may never be known because most of these seemingly minor cases are disposed of by the 20 district judges throughout the county and the records eventually are destroyed.

A review of civil court records by the Intelligencer Journal shows that in every case where parties have opted to fight Kline’s appeal in Lancaster County Court, they have prevailed.

Nevertheless, of the 41 cases reviewed by the Intelligencer Journal, 25 were dropped when his customers learned he had paid $96.50 to appeal the case to Lancaster County Court and that they would have to hire an attorney if they wished to pursue the matter further.

On March 22, Kline appealed the McGrath-Thomas complaint to Lancaster County Court.

In Kline’s response to the McGrath-Thomas complaint, his attorney, Beulah P. Mall, says Hamill’s judgment should be stricken, in part, because they didn’t specifically name Kline’s company in the lawsuit.

“In the instant case, Plaintiffs have clearly sued the wrong entity,” Mall writes in the response. “The written copy of the contract in question clearly identifies the maker of the proposal as Ralph F. Kline Roofing, Siding, Insulation, Inc. and the only individual who accepted the contract in writing was Virginia McGrath. Martha Thomas was not a party to the written contract in issue.”

Mall declined to discuss the specifics of the case, saying legal rules of ethics prohibit attorneys from discussing ongoing civil lawsuits.

McGrath and Thomas also declined to be interviewed for similar reasons, though McGrath did express frustration about the lengthy court battle.

“This has taken longer than I would have ever thought,” she said.

The lawsuits don’t stop at the county line.

In 1991, the state Bureau of Consumer Protection, under then-Attorney General Ernest D. Preate Jr., filed a civil lawsuit on behalf of nine of Kline’s customers. In December 1993, Kline settled the case out of court by entering into a consent decree with the attorney general’s office. Kline agreed to pay $22,000 in consumer restitution, penalties and costs, according to court records.

“He also agreed to cut out the shenanigans,” said Barbara Petito, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Tom Corbett’s office.

According to the agreement, “Defendant Kline shall comply with all industry codes and standards as well as any local laws and/or ordinances in connection with performing general home improvement and repairs. Defendant Kline shall comply with all written guarantees or warranties given to any purchaser of materials or general home improvement and repair services provided … them, whether provided prior to or after the effective date of this consent petition.”

Seven months later, however, the office was forced to take Kline back to court because 10 more people had filed complaints against him, according to court documents.

In November 1994, Commonwealth Court President Judge James Gardner Colins found Kline had violated the consent agreement, but the judge refused to shut his business down.

Instead, Colins once again ordered Kline to pay restitution and abide by his settlement agreement with the state.

“Any future violations of the Dec. 2, 1993, consent decree or of this order shall result in defendant Kline’s forfeiture of his right to do business in the commonwealth,” Colins says in his ruling.

Since that ruling, however, Lancaster County civil court records show more than 30 complaints from local customers, including Thomas, McGrath and the Arnolds. Complainants accuse Kline of various charges. Some say he hiked his job prices after signing contracts, some say he refused to refund deposits when he failed to complete work and others say he refused to correct the shoddy work he did complete.

Kline’s business practices also have landed him in criminal court, though with mixed results.

In 1990, Warwick Township police Lt. Edward Tobin filed one misdemeanor count of theft by deception and deceptive business practices against Kline for allegedly defrauding a customer of $480 after agreeing to install one square of vertical siding.

“From what I recall, Mr. Kline agreed to put up the siding and went as far as ordering it,” Tobin said. “But he never took another step toward completing the job.”

Both the customer and the siding company called Kline repeatedly, Tobin said, but to no avail. Finally, after six months, Tobin said the customer called police.

Former President Judge D. Richard Eckman threw out the charges against Kline and referred the case to civil court.

“The facts alleged in the motion … establish that this case is properly a civil matter and the criminal system should not be used to resolve civil matters,” Eckman said in his ruling. “Costs are placed on the county.”

Kline apparently proved to the judge that he did not intend to defraud the customer, Tobin said, even though he never did the work.

“If I recall correctly, the judge determined Mr. Kline intended to do the job because he placed the order for the siding,” Tobin said.

And that’s part of the problem, according to Petito: Kline has not broken the law.

“Under the criminal statute, there is a higher burden to meet,” Petito said. “Prosecutors have to prove intent. For example, in the case of a home improvement contractor, intent to defraud is gone if they deliver materials, order supplies or drop off tools — even if they never take another step to do the work.”

Nevertheless, the Warwick case is as close as Pennsylvania law-enforcement authorities have come to prosecuting Kline for criminal conduct related to his business practices.

The latest criminal charge against Kline was filed in May by the Lancaster County District Attorney’s Office.

County Detective Jan Walters filed one count of theft of services against Kline for allegedly stopping payment on a $1,563.50 check he issued to an East Petersburg car repair shop that had replaced the transmission in Kline’s truck.

According to the criminal complaint filed by Walters, one of Kline’s employees told investigators that immediately after picking up the truck from the mechanic, “Kline stopped at a service station and called the bank to stop payment.”

When the mechanic called to find out why Kline had stopped payment on the check, Kline allegedly told him “that he could have gotten the job done cheaper.”

“Mr. Kline told (the mechanic) to call his lawyer and hung up,” Walters says in his criminal complaint.

Kline’s bank record, Walters says in the report, shows Kline never had enough money in his checking account to cover the costs of the repair.

On Aug. 19, the Lancaster County Assistant District Attorney’s office agreed to drop the charge against Kline once he paid what he owed to the garage owner, plus court costs.

But it’s not just Kline’s business practices that get him into trouble.

In November 2002, Kline was found guilty by Judge Michael J. Perezous of 44 counts of failure to comply with Manheim Borough’s Property Maintenance Code and was fined $4,400 plus costs.

Donna Czeiner, the borough’s zoning and code compliance officer, said she reviewed the file and found that all 44 counts involved one property Kline owns at South Main and Stiegel streets.

“It was everything you could think of,” Czeiner said. “But mostly it was a lack of maintenance.”

Among other things, she said, there was an accumulation of trash on the property and tall grass around the building — and Kline’s roof was in disrepair.

Although they were only summary charges, Kline fought all of them all the way to summary court.

Asked whether Kline is under investigation by the attorney general’s office, Petito would not offer a confirmation or a denial. She said the office, now operating under Attorney General Corbett, is aware of Kline’s history.

Petito said consumers who think they’re being defrauded by Kline can file complaints with the Attorney General’s Office by calling (800) 441-2555 or visiting the Web site, www.attorneygeneral.gov.