Frederick M. Hueston, PhD

This old man, yours truly, has been in the stone business nearly all of his life. I won’t mention how old I am, but I remember my dad doing carvings of wooly mammoths on the cave wall. All kidding aside, it still amazes me what folks will sue over. Today I got one of those cases, and I’m sure you will be as amazed and perplexed as I was.

As usual, I was sitting at the counter in my favorite greasy spoon listening to the retired admiral telling me one of his salty old stories. Thankfully my phone rang, interrupting his monologue. I flipped it open and answered in my normal Spencer Tracy-imitation voice, “Stone Detective here, can I help you?” 

The voice on the other end said he was an attorney representing a restoration contractor who was being sued by a client. Apparently, the claim was that the floor was “wavy,” along with some baseboard damage. He asked if I could come take a look at it. I asked where the house was located and he told me it was out in the sticks, somewhere in Montana. Well, I’ve never been to Montana, so I agreed and told him I would look at flights and get back to him.

The day of my flight arrived and I was off to the airport very early, but the line was already out the door. Thank goodness I had registered for TSA prescreening. For those of you who travel a lot, it’s well worth it. There was no line with the precheck, and I breezed right through.  

I got on my flight and avoided being beaten up by the airline (LOL). The attorney said he would meet me at baggage claim.  He said he would also be holding a sign with my name on it. I walked into baggage claim and immediately saw a tall gentleman wearing a red suit and a big bow tie holding a sign that said Mr. Stone Detective. I kid you not, for a moment I thought I was about to be in a McDonald’s commercial with Ronald McDonald.

As we were traveling to the home for the inspection, he got on his cell phone and began talking about some other case. He was on the phone the entire drive. I was hoping I could get some background information before we got to the jobsite, but noooo. 

After about an hour’s drive, we arrived at the gate of an enormous house. It looked more like a hotel, only out in the middle of nowhere. My first thought was, “Who owns this monstrosity?” I would soon find out.

A young gentleman answered the doorbell and invited us in. This guy could not have been any older than 25, and he owned this place? 

He wasn’t a celebratory  celebrity, but I later found out that he had invented some financial software and was one of those Silicone Valley billionaires. I keep telling myself I should have changed my major in college to computer science. 

He pointed to the floor and began complaining about the waviness of the shine. I got down on my knees to take a look. By the way, at my age it’s not easy getting down – not to mention back up. I ought to charge extra to kneel for inspections! 

The first thing I noticed was that the far end of the living room had some huge windows. The sun happened to be shining in and the floor did look wavy. I asked Billionaire Kid if we could close the shades so I could take a better look at the floor without the sun shining in. He was holding a remote control in his hand and pressed a button and these enormous shades began closing. Once the shades were closed, I noticed that the wave was gone. About this time the restoration contractor showed up. I wanted to ask him about the process he used, but did not want to do this in front of the kid.  So, I walked around and looked for the other damage the kid claimed the contractor had caused.

I couldn’t find a thing wrong with the finish on the floor or any significant damage. There were several small areas with a tiny nick or two on the baseboard, and I would later find out that there were other tradesmen in the house at the time the restoration contractor was doing the floor. For this reason alone, it was impossible to determine who actually nicked the baseboards. Long story short: the job looked great, no wave, no damage. Ronald McDonald seemed happy and so did the contractor. As for the Billionaire Kid? Not so much. It will be interesting if this goes to trial, or if the kid hires his own expert. I wish all my cases were this easy. Now, since I am stuck here for awhile, what is there to do in Montana?

BTW, in case you haven’t figured it out, the problem wasn’t the floor: it was the light shining in, creating an optical illusion on the highly polished floor.

The Stone Detective is a fictional character created by Dr. Frederick M. Hueston, PhD, written to be entertaining and educational. Dr. Fred has written over 33 books on stone and tile installations, fabrication and restoration and also serves as an expert for many legal cases across the world. Send your email comments to him at fhueston@stoneforensics.com.