Attorney General Aaron Frey filed a lawsuit Friday looking to bar a Waldo County contractor from doing business in Maine and force him to pay restitution for shoddy and undone work.
The civil lawsuit includes an 11-page complaint alleging that Jake Brown, a Palermo-based excavation contractor, and his company performed defective work on at least 14 occasions since 2022 and did not complete work in at least 20 instances during that period.
Asking a judge to bar a company from operation is the strongest civil action that the attorney general’s office can take against a construction business, though it is still unclear whether the clients will ever be repaid. Brown was arrested on felony charges in October for writing a bad check, although he was released on bail.
Both of those actions followed a Bangor Daily News story that detailed civil lawsuits against Brown and his company, as well as his pattern of having clients pay heavy sums upfront. He regularly ignored their attempts to recover money as well as civil court and mediation proceedings as cases filtered into Maine’s judicial system.
Frey’s office alleges that the upfront charges were excessive. In one case, Brown allegedly requested full payment before any benchmarks were met. The state is suing him on five counts of violating the Unfair Trade Practices Act, including home construction contract violations, failure to perform work, misrepresentations, defective work and bad checks.
“As a result … dozens of customers have incurred damages for out of pocket costs to repair or replace [Brown’s] defective work, and to hire replacement contractors to complete [his] scope of work,” the complaint reads.
Frey’s office has called for the court to enter a judgment in its favor against Brown and grant relief for his victims. The exact amount of restitution hasn’t been determined, the complaint says. Maine courts have already granted more than $400,000 in four civil judgments against Brown. The number of cases cited by the state suggests that the damages are far higher.
Brown would also have to pay for the cost of the attorney general’s investigation, as well as a civil penalty up to $10,000 per intentional violation of Maine trade law.
The office is looking to permanently bar Brown and any “agents, servants and employees” who actively participated in his scams from doing any kind of construction work. Nobody besides Brown is named in the suit.
