Judge orders contractor to pay civil suit judgment

LACONIA — A contractor has been ordered to pay money to two people who were subcontractors on a job in Maine.

Superior Court Justice James D. O’Neill III ordered Francis Rich to pay $63,200 to Charles Roberts and Greg Morse.

Rich, whose legal address is Alton, had initially been ordered to pay the money to Roberts and Rich by a judge in Androscoggin County Superior Court in Maine in June 2016 on condition that Roberts and Rich return a forklift that belonged to Rich.

Last month, the three men were in Belknap County Superior Court for a hearing about Rich’s failure to pay the Maine court judgment that arose out of civil suit brought against Rich by Roberts and Morse.

Roberts and Morse testified that they had returned the forklift in October 2016 to a property in Londonderry which the two said was a place they knew that Rich used in connection with his contracting business.

But Rich’s attorney, Paul Monzione, told the court that his client never owned the Londonderry property and that there was no written record that the forklift had been delivered back to Rich. Rich said during the hearing that he would be unable to come up with the money to satisfy the judgment.

In his ruling handed down Wednesday, O’Neill said the preponderance of the evidence indicated that Roberts and Rich had returned the forklift and so were entitled to $63,200. He also stated that Rich’s testimony that he and Roberts and Greg had not discussed the return of the forklift in a subsequent phone call did not seem credible.

O’Neill further ordered Rich to pay for Roberts’ and Morse’s attorney’s fees.