Hilton Head contractor ordered to pay $600K in lawsuit. He says it’s a ‘smear campaign’
A judge has ordered a Hilton Head Island contractor to pay more than half a million dollars to a former client who alleged he was ripped off in a lawsuit, according to court documents.
Garland “Calvin” Wright, 57, of Wright Home Services, was ordered Friday to pay $628,056 in a judgment.
As part of the same incident, the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office arrested Wright Oct. 6, 2020, and charged him with two counts of obtaining money under false pretenses and two counts of operating on a revoked license.
John DeRiggi, a real estate investor who lives outside of Philadelphia, told police that he paid Wright $84,000 to remodel his investment property on Ocean Lane, but Wright never finished the work, arrest warrants say. The work and payments took place between August 2019 and May 2020.
He also said Wright never mentioned that his contractor license was revoked.
Reached by phone, Wright said his former client is conducting “a smear campaign” against him.
“His lawyers took advantage of me. If I’m such a bad person, who goes to court and says we’re going to pile on this little guy,” Wright said in a phone interview. “How am I going to pay anybody anything when he’s telling every Tom, Dick, and Harry that I stole from him?”
‘He took my money’
Ever since their falling out, DeRiggi has pursued Wright: He filed a lawsuit against him, reported him to the police for criminal charges, sent an official complaint to the S.C. Department of Labor, Licensing, and Regulation, emailed the Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette newspapers, and made several posts on Facebook.
“If you walked up the street and saw crime, would you just walk away?” DeRiggi asked in a phone interview. “A lot of people wouldn’t go through the time, money, and effort [that I did].”
Wright acknowledged he never finished the work, but he said it was because DeRiggi took him off the job when he found out his license was revoked.
“No one ever told me I have a revoked license,” he said. “I’ve been building on this island for a dozen years.”
In 2017, the state labor department took Wright’s license after a customer paid him three times, for a total of $51,158, to renovate her home, according to a public order. He “ruptured two water pipes,” and inspectors found “peeling paint, leaking shower fixtures, damage to interior surfaces, and other problems,” the order said.
Wright did not show up for the hearing. He also did not contest DeRiggi’s lawsuit, which is why the judgment against him is more than seven times what was originally owed.
Another former client, Catherine Campagna, who owns a rental property on Lighthouse Road, blamed Wright for not finishing her renovation, either. She said she wired him two payments of $20,000 to remodel rooms in the home from January to February 2020.
Campagna said she realized by the summer that the property had been gutted, and the renovations were never done.
“Basically, he took my money, gutted the place, and didn’t do a thing but lie,” she said.
She also has sued Wright. He hasn’t contested that lawsuit, either, and it’s next slated for a damages hearing.
Wright said both cases can be explained: His workers contracted COVID, and he had only oral contracts for both jobs. He said Campagna didn’t pay him enough to do the job, and DeRiggi did not allow him to finish the work.
He described getting arrested and sued for the same incident as “a spanking and a beat down.”
“I’m getting freakin’ hassled for a business deal.”
