Being Sued By Retired Lawyer Serial Plaintiff – Need Advice On How To Protect Myself And My Small Business (colorado)

Hi everyone, I could really use some legal insight here.

I own a small remodeling company in Colorado. We’ve been in business about two years, finally starting to gain traction, but cash flow is still tight. I am not personally in the best financial situation either.

A few months ago, we took on a job for a homeowner for a relatively small amount. From day one, he was aggressive—interrupting and cursing at my team, threatening them, and found a reason to kick them out of the house each of the three days we were there. After four days of this, I told my crew to walk off the job. I offered the client a full refund of their deposit—even though I had already spent more than that on labor and materials. I just wanted to be done with it. I texted with him for about 10 days being more than reasonable to help him find a new contractor to finish the job and ensure he wouldn’t be spending a dime more in total than he had signed our contract for. I also offered to complete the job if he would sign something saying he wouldn’t harass, curse, or interfere with our teams work.

Last week I was out of state for my wedding, I came home to what appeared to be an attempt to serve me. A lawyer friend helped me look into it, and sure enough, the homeowner had filed a lawsuit and extended the time to serve me. He’s suing me for around $25,000.

The claims are outrageous: harassment, violating Colorado’s statute on elder abuse, and a handful of other accusations that are demonstrably false and make no logical sense. He claims emotional distress, that we yelled at him, forced him to into his crawl space to staple insulation (lie), and that his cat got stuck in his crawlspace because of a hole we left- resulting in thousands of dollars worth of emotional distress. Crazy things.

My lawyer friend dug into his history and found that this guy is a retired attorney, and he has been the plaintiff in over 120 lawsuits over the past 20 years. Apparently, he sues 6–10 small businesses a year, all in industries like mine. He always represents himself and seems to know how to weaponize the legal system.

What are my options here? Is there a way to get this thrown out or expose this as a pattern of abuse of the courts? File a counterclaim? Any advice or next steps would be greatly appreciated. I will note the contract he signed does have a stipulation stating the prevailing party shall recover all legal expenses. Also my lawyer friend said people like this target this amount because they know going to trial could be more expensive, so it is best to just settle, despite that potentially costing me a third of everything I have over complete lies.

Thank you so much.

use location: Colorado