Ed Newton worked long hours doing hardwood flooring for TST Construction, mostly on new residential complexes on the outskirts of Philly. He didn’t mind hard work. He loved tools and making things with his hands, but his bosses were cheap rat bastards, always trying to cut corners, always trying to squeeze the last bit of juice out of anyone who worked for them.
“It sucks working for someone,” Ed Newton oft repeated to his daughter between bites as they sat at the Formica kitchen table. “Be your own boss, Jackie.”
That was the dream.
When Jackie was ten, Ed Newton bought her a leathercraft suede tool belt. It was the most beautiful thing Jackie had ever owned. It smelled like pinewood and sawdust. She treated the leather with oils three times a week. She wore it all the time. Even now. Even more than a quarter century after he first gave it to her. When she was eleven, Dad managed to buy a small plot of land outside the Poconos. Every weekend father and daughter would go out there and build Dad’s dream hunting-and-fishing cabin. Jackie always wore the tool belt. Ed was a patient teacher, and she was a quick study. They worked mostly in silence. The work was Zen for them both.
The two of them had plans too. One day, Ed said, they’d open their own contracting company. The two of them. They’d work for themselves. They’d be their own bosses.
When she was eighteen, Jackie got a full scholarship to Montgomery County Community College. She took finance courses, something her father encouraged so they could shore up the fiscal side of running a construction firm. Jackie worked various construction jobs after graduation to learn the business inside and out. The hope was that if they scrimped and saved, they’d be able to open their own shop in three to five years.
It took longer than they anticipated.
Ed put a second mortgage on the house in Philadelphia and despite Jackie’s protests, he sold the dream cabin they’d built outside the Poconos. By the time they raised enough capital to get a business loan, Jackie was thirty-three, Ed was sixty-two — but a dream delayed is not a dream denied.
One day, Ed Newton burst through the front door with a stack of business cards that read:
The logo on the upper right-hand corner was a little house with windows as eyes and a wide door as the smile. Jackie had never seen her father so happy, and for the first six months, things went surprisingly well. The Nesbitt Brothers needed last-minute help with a housing development in Bryn Mawr. Newton and Daughter kicked ass on the project, bringing it in under budget. That job got them some good referrals. Other jobs followed. Ed and Jackie hired three full-time staff and leased office space in a warehouse on Castor Avenue.
Newton and Daughter were still small-time with a lowercase s, but they were moving in the right direction.
After a year, their fine work and excellent reputation got on the radar of Ronald Prine, a major Philadelphia real estate mogul. Prine’s people invited Ed to put in a bid on hardwood floor work for the new, upscale Prine skyscraper on Arch Street. It was a huge job, too big for them really, but it would be a prestigious get and a chance to put Newton and Daughter on the map.
Ed and Jackie spent two weeks working out the numbers and creating a full PowerPoint presentation for the Prine conglomerate, but their initial bid, according to Prine’s people, came in too high. Ed Newton went back to his office. He sharpened his pencil and lowered their bid. Prine’s people still balked.
They’re smart businessmen, Ed explained to his daughter. That was why conglomerates like Prine’s were so successful — they know how to squeeze every dollar. Jackie wasn’t so sure. The job was too unwieldy, and now the margins were far too low. She didn’t like or trust Prine’s people. She had heard stories about smaller contractors like them being stiffed.
But Ed wouldn’t hear of it. A prominent job like this would be incredible publicity for them. It would give Newton and Daughter legitimacy that money couldn’t buy. If they could break even on something like this, Ed told her — heck, even if they lost a dollar or two — they’d come out ahead.
After lowering their numbers one more time, Newton and Daughter won the bid.
The job was all-consuming. It took everything out of them in every way, but hey, they were playing in the major leagues now. Dad loved that. He walked into O’Malley’s Pub with his back a little straighter, his smile a little wider. He got congratulatory slaps on the back from his old coworkers. They wanted to buy him drinks.
Like so many things, it was all good until it wasn’t.
First off, Prine was late on the down payment. The money was coming, they were repeatedly told. This was the multinational conglomerate’s standard operating procedure, they were assured. Just get started on the job. And so they did. Ed took out another loan to buy the flooring from his favorite sawmill in Hazlehurst, Georgia. A little more expensive but worth it. Ed and Jackie turned down other jobs, good jobs, to focus solely on the Prine skyscraper. It was a hard job with lots of red tape, delays, overruns, cost issues.
In the end, they’d lose money, but the hardwood flooring was top-notch, impeccable. Ed and Jackie took tremendous pride in what they’d done. They’d had their backs to the wall and showed they could play with the big boys.
You can guess the rest, can’t you?
Prine stiffed them. Not a little bit. Not a chisel. He simply didn’t pay them. When they finished the job and presented the final invoice, Prine ignored it. He didn’t even bother to lie, to say the money was coming, to claim it would just be another week. He didn’t even offer up the hoary chestnut that the check was in the mail. Ed Newton sent another invoice. Then another. Weeks passed. Then months. Ed and Jackie made phone calls, but no one with any authority would get on the line. They showed up at the office, but security wouldn’t allow them on the premises. Left with no other option, Ed and Jackie ended up hiring an attorney appropriately named Richard Fee. Prine ignored the attorney too. More months passed. They eventually had no choice but to sue the Prine Organization. It wasn’t David versus Goliath — it was David versus a thousand Goliaths. Prine’s lawyers, a massive team of them, swarmed and overwhelmed them. They drowned Ed and Jackie in paperwork. They submitted constant motions. They made outrageous demands on discovery. Ed and Jackie’s legal fees started piling up. Richard Fee dropped out once the money ran out. When Ed and Jackie tried to dig in their heels, Prine’s people bad-mouthed their work, just straight-up lied about shoddy craftsmanship and needing to redo. Newton and Daughter’s reputation was left in tatters. After two more months, Prine finally offered to settle for twenty cents on the dollar. Ed refused.
You know the rest, don’t you?
They lost their business. They lost the house. Eventually, to pay off a small percentage of their growing debt, the bankruptcy courts forced them to take a deal that gave them fourteen cents on the dollar. As part of the settlement, Ed and Jackie were forced to sign nondisclosure agreements, so that they couldn’t tell anyone what Prine or his organization had done to them.
In April of this year, Ed Newton suffered a debilitating stroke. Maybe it was just his age or a lifetime of not eating right. Maybe it wasn’t connected at all to the lawsuit or all the losses. But Jackie didn’t believe that. It was Prine. What he had done to her father. What he had done to them.