01-20-2012, 03:58 PM
I wonder if Mr. & Mrs. Badger knew all this about this contractor? Shocking story!
From The Stamford Advocate
Borcina has troubled legal history
Christmas blaze: Ex-clients seek payments from contractor
Jeff Morganteen, Staff Writer
Updated 11:56 p.m., Thursday, January 19, 2012
STAMFORD -- Michael Borcina, the contractor overseeing renovations at the Shippan Avenue mansion consumed in the Christmas morning fire that killed three young sisters and their grandparents, has a trail of legal judgments and pending lawsuits over disputes from past jobs, court files show.
Borcina owes nearly $100,000 in legal judgments from two past projects in Manhattan and upstate Connecticut. According to a source familiar with the lawsuits, one of the former clients tried serving Borcina with legal documents during his hospital stay following the Shippan Avenue fire, in which he suffered burns and smoke inhalation.
Borcina also faces lawsuits from two more recent clients in Manhattan and Long Island. The complaints, filed over projects from the past two years, seek nearly $75,000.
Borcina's attorney, Eugene Riccio, declined to comment for the story. Since Borcina escaped the Shippan Avenue home during the fire on Christmas morning -- which Stamford fire officials initially said started when Borcina discarded fireplace embers in a plastic bag -- scrutiny on the contractor and his business has mounted. With clients such as television personality Gayle King and an award-winning director, Borcina's high-end construction company, Tiberias, catered to upper-crust clientele, despite his rocky legal history.
One former client, identified through court records as Maurice Sonnenberg, a senior international adviser at JP Morgan Chase, won an $86,666 judgment against Borcina six years ago. Sonnenberg, a former adviser in several U.S. presidential administrations, filed a lawsuit against Borcina in 2004 at state Superior Court in Danbury after hiring Greenwich attorney Philip Russell.
Sonnenberg accused Borcina of breaching two contracts by failing to complete a pair of home improvement projects in winter 2001 at his Manhattan apartment, according to court documents. Two years after filing the lawsuit, Sonnenberg won a judgment ordering Borcina to pay $31,666 in damages, $50,000 on lost rental income from the unfinished apartment, and $5,000 in attorney's fees.
Borcina didn't hire an attorney, nor did he appear on his behalf in the lawsuit, according to the court file. The court awarded the $86,666 judgment in February 2006 after checking whether Borcina was serving in the U.S. military.
Holly Flor, a Roxbury woman who hired Borcina for a restoration in 1999, said she and her husband were unable to locate him after they secured a $15,000 judgment against him in a 2001 lawsuit filed at state Superior Court in Litchfield. She and her husband fired Borcina from the renovation job because of his erratic and unprofessional behavior, she said.
"He fancied himself a big-time contractor," Flor said. "I think what he was, was a skilled carpenter."
Flor recalled Borcina as bombastic and aggressive, especially with his employees. His personality often appeared to get in the way of the job, she said, which languished over a four- to six-month period. Turnover among workers was high during the renovation, she recalled, and his personal life seemed turbulent. She often was unable to reach him by phone, and he blamed missed appointments on car trouble and other excuses, Flor said.
"Even when I first met him he was always this testosterone-driven personality," Flor said. "This macho thing came through as his modus operandi."
At one point, he asked to move into Flor's home, she said. He lived in a wing of their large home for several weeks during the renovation.
More than a decade later, Borcina was staying at the Shippan Avenue home of Madonna Badger, a 47-year-old New York City advertising executive, when a raging fire ripped through the house and killed Badger's three daughters and her parents Christmas morning. Borcina and Badger escaped the fire. The intense heat of the fire pushed firefighters from the house during several rescue attempts.
http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/art...php#page-1
Read page 2 at link above.
From The Stamford Advocate
Borcina has troubled legal history
Christmas blaze: Ex-clients seek payments from contractor
Jeff Morganteen, Staff Writer
Updated 11:56 p.m., Thursday, January 19, 2012
STAMFORD -- Michael Borcina, the contractor overseeing renovations at the Shippan Avenue mansion consumed in the Christmas morning fire that killed three young sisters and their grandparents, has a trail of legal judgments and pending lawsuits over disputes from past jobs, court files show.
Borcina owes nearly $100,000 in legal judgments from two past projects in Manhattan and upstate Connecticut. According to a source familiar with the lawsuits, one of the former clients tried serving Borcina with legal documents during his hospital stay following the Shippan Avenue fire, in which he suffered burns and smoke inhalation.
Borcina also faces lawsuits from two more recent clients in Manhattan and Long Island. The complaints, filed over projects from the past two years, seek nearly $75,000.
Borcina's attorney, Eugene Riccio, declined to comment for the story. Since Borcina escaped the Shippan Avenue home during the fire on Christmas morning -- which Stamford fire officials initially said started when Borcina discarded fireplace embers in a plastic bag -- scrutiny on the contractor and his business has mounted. With clients such as television personality Gayle King and an award-winning director, Borcina's high-end construction company, Tiberias, catered to upper-crust clientele, despite his rocky legal history.
One former client, identified through court records as Maurice Sonnenberg, a senior international adviser at JP Morgan Chase, won an $86,666 judgment against Borcina six years ago. Sonnenberg, a former adviser in several U.S. presidential administrations, filed a lawsuit against Borcina in 2004 at state Superior Court in Danbury after hiring Greenwich attorney Philip Russell.
Sonnenberg accused Borcina of breaching two contracts by failing to complete a pair of home improvement projects in winter 2001 at his Manhattan apartment, according to court documents. Two years after filing the lawsuit, Sonnenberg won a judgment ordering Borcina to pay $31,666 in damages, $50,000 on lost rental income from the unfinished apartment, and $5,000 in attorney's fees.
Borcina didn't hire an attorney, nor did he appear on his behalf in the lawsuit, according to the court file. The court awarded the $86,666 judgment in February 2006 after checking whether Borcina was serving in the U.S. military.
Holly Flor, a Roxbury woman who hired Borcina for a restoration in 1999, said she and her husband were unable to locate him after they secured a $15,000 judgment against him in a 2001 lawsuit filed at state Superior Court in Litchfield. She and her husband fired Borcina from the renovation job because of his erratic and unprofessional behavior, she said.
"He fancied himself a big-time contractor," Flor said. "I think what he was, was a skilled carpenter."
Flor recalled Borcina as bombastic and aggressive, especially with his employees. His personality often appeared to get in the way of the job, she said, which languished over a four- to six-month period. Turnover among workers was high during the renovation, she recalled, and his personal life seemed turbulent. She often was unable to reach him by phone, and he blamed missed appointments on car trouble and other excuses, Flor said.
"Even when I first met him he was always this testosterone-driven personality," Flor said. "This macho thing came through as his modus operandi."
At one point, he asked to move into Flor's home, she said. He lived in a wing of their large home for several weeks during the renovation.
More than a decade later, Borcina was staying at the Shippan Avenue home of Madonna Badger, a 47-year-old New York City advertising executive, when a raging fire ripped through the house and killed Badger's three daughters and her parents Christmas morning. Borcina and Badger escaped the fire. The intense heat of the fire pushed firefighters from the house during several rescue attempts.
http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/art...php#page-1
Read page 2 at link above.
"A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone."
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau