One gloomy morning in 2010, major water damage inundated an upscale Los Angeles residence owned by an unscrupulous and wealthy entrepreneur. He contacted a prominent restoration contractor and signed a generic Work Authorization which did not specify the scope of work or the price.
The laws of California and many other states require contractors working on residential property to provide a sufficiently-detailed written scope of work and an exact price “stated in dollars and cents” in a document signed by the owner prior to the commencement of work. The villain described above later signed a second work authorization which, like the first one, did not include the total price of the work, but did include a price list. But then the job was billed according to a totally different set of prices from Xactimate.