Just about every Sunday, David Svendsen - a 59-year-old federal
worker - pulls himself out of bed, grabs a stack of flyers, and
heads out to a John L. Scott open house to protest what he calls
anti-consumer practices. The flyers he hands to potential home buyers
outline three court cases in which the real estate company has been
cited for violations of the Consumer Protection Act and other misdeeds
such as "fraudulent concealment." He kicked off his public
information campaign,
which has included media attention and some rather large signs on
the fence bordering his yard, after winning a case against John
L. Scott in which he claimed the company knew about a flooding problem
on his property before he bought it, but didn't tell him. Rather
than paying the judgment or admitting that its listing agent was
wrong, the company appealed. That's when Svendsen headed to the
printer.
"John L. Scott has made, I believe, a
business decision not to settle these cases, to drag them out for as long as
possible," says Svendsen. "They do that because they want the reputation that
they are a company that you can't sue -- that it's going to cost you too much time and
money to make it worth your while. Well, I'm not going to go with that."
Svendsen has started a landslide of ill will
toward the company. He was the focus of an article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in
June 1998, which characterized John L. Scott as playing hardball with consumers, and
appeared on a KVI radio program the same day. His campaign has been so successful, in
fact, that he says agents now run out to meet him at open houses, yelling at him and
calling him a "terrorist." Svendsen reckons the increased hostility is due to
the fact that he's making a dent in John L. Scott's business. He says that at every open
house he attends, someone takes his literature and drives away.
The main focus of Svendsen's ire -- the Goliath to
Svendsen's David, you could say -- is Douglas Tingvall, John L. Scott's in-house counsel
for the past 13 years. At 43, Tingvall is considered a formidable opponent in legal
battles, in part because he's had a hand in drafting much of the state's real estate law.
Often described with exasperation, he's characterized as a supremely confident attorney
who doesn't back down from a fight, especially if he perceives that there is a principle
at stake. Tingvall chafes at Svendsen's characterization of his company. "First of
all, John L. Scott has not become what we regard as the premier real estate brokerage
company in the Pacific Northwest with a 67-year history by winning lawsuits," his
baritone voice booms. "We're in a service business and we've become successful by
having satisfied clients and customers." A check of consumer complaints at the
Washington Attorney General's office shows 47 filings since 1990 (Tingvall says John L.
Scott handles somewhere around 30,000 transactions per year), compared to 49 for
Windermere and 22 for Coldwell Banker, the other large realtors in the area.
This is an excerpt from "Buyer Beware," an article by Jennifer
Vogel which originally appeared in the DEC/JAN 1998-1999 issue of Washington Law &
Politics. It is published here with permission