Statement Regarding Recent Court Ruling and False Claims by Expert Witness
Signature Building Systems of PA is committed to integrity, transparency, and the delivery of high-quality modular homes that meet or exceed state and third-party inspection standards. We feel compelled to address a recent Google review posted by Scott Orlowski, who served as an expert witness in a now-dismissed lawsuit involving one of our projects.
Background
Mr. Orlowski testified in a Massachusetts Superior Court case (Essex Sup. Ct. Nos. 1877CV00506 & 1977CV01161) brought by William and Catherine Christina. The plaintiffs sought over $3.7 million in damages related to their modular home. On November 26, 2024, the Court dismissed all claims with prejudice and issued a detailed ruling citing fraud on the court, willful misconduct, and abuse of the judicial process.
Direct Findings from the Court
The judge’s memorandum made the following factual findings relevant to Mr. Orlowski’s role:
“The Plaintiffs also introduced photographs into evidence that materially misrepresented the condition of the house and presented expert testimony about those photographs.”
“Orlowski had testified at length about Trial Exhibit 258... Yet, the videos reveal that it was almost certainly Orlowski himself who created that gap.”
“Several videos... show Orlowski actually removing insulation between the ‘marriage’ walls.”
“There is nothing included in Orlowski’s expert report about being present for any of the sheetrock and/or drywall removal or physically removing insulation.”
“If these videos had been disclosed before trial, as they should have been, defense counsel would have had the opportunity to question Orlowski about his conduct at the house.”
In addition to these revelations, the Court found that:
300 videos were withheld by the plaintiffs until mid-trial.
Photographs and metadata used in Mr. Orlowski’s testimony were altered and misrepresented.
Ultimately, the Court ruled:
“The Plaintiffs' behavior subverted the Court's responsibility to ensure that the jury received reliable evidence... The harm was irreparable.”
“The only appropriate remedy is one of dismissal.”
Our Position
Signature Building Systems operates with full transparency and regulatory compliance. All homes we produce:
Are state-certified and inspected by licensed third-party agencies.
Are delivered per plan and code
Must be completed on site by licensed general contractors, as required by state law (including Massachusetts).
We will not allow our reputation to be undermined by claims that were proven false in a court of law.
Read the Ruling
For those interested in the full context, we encourage reading the official court decision, publicly available and hosted here.
Mass Lawyer Weekly Article
Years after it arrived on site in Danvers, William and Catherine Christina’s prefabricated home remains unfinished.
Attorney, husband have suit over home dismissed due to fraud on court
Kris Olson//December 19, 2024//
William and Catherine Christina’s odyssey to move into their prefabricated home in an upscale North Shore neighborhood has persisted for the better part of a decade.
Drive into the Danvers cul-de-sac where the Christinas’ property is located, and you’ll pass homes all assessed at $1.23 million or more. Most have at least four bedrooms, three bathrooms, and over 3,000 square feet of finished area.
Then, there’s the Christinas’ property. Frayed home wrap on the structure sways in the breeze, exposed to the elements due to incomplete siding work. The driveway remains unpaved.
For the past six years, the Christinas have tried to pin the blame for the unfinished construction of their dream home on others.
However, they and their counsel have been dealt their quest for compensation a mortal blow, at least with respect to several defendants.
On Nov. 26, Superior Court Judge Lynn C. Rooney dismissed the Christinas’ case in response to joint defense motion for sanctions, finding that the Christinas had engaged in improper conduct and committed fraud on the court, ending the couple’s pursuit of more than $3.7 million in damages from custom modular home manufacturer Signature Building Systems of PA and other defendants.
The Christinas’ main offense, according to the judge, was failing to produce photographs and videos that went right to the heart of the case, documenting what the couple claimed were construction defects and other issues with the home.
On Oct. 17, 2022, the Christinas responded to a discovery request from one of the defendants saying essentially that they had handed over everything they had that was not privileged.
“That statement was false,” Rooney wrote.
In fact, more than two years later, on the 15th day of the trial — Oct. 31, 2024 — the defendants learned that they were missing some videos — and more than a few.
“The Plaintiffs’ eventual production revealed that there were 152 videos of the subject property taken by the Plaintiffs that existed as of March 30, 2022, and that were not disclosed to the Defendants until they were produced mid-trial on November 3 and 8, 2024,” Rooney wrote. “In total, Plaintiffs failed to provide 300 video recordings.”
The plaintiffs produced 127 photographs that they said showed the conditions underneath the drywall or sheetrock at the property. But initially, none were dated, which was a problem, given that the Christinas were suing 11 defendants that had each performed work at different times, Rooney pointed out.
The plaintiffs attached one set of dates to the photos and then altered those dates in a subsequent filing.
Asked by the judge to explain, the plaintiffs’ attorney, Warren D. Hutchison of Freeman, Mathis & Gary in Boston, conferred with Catherine Christina, an attorney with Boston’s Pappas & Pappas, and replied that, upon further review, the plaintiffs had determined that some of the dates were off and had requested the IT department at Hutchison’s firm to take another look.
When Hutchison could not immediately get someone from his firm’s IT department onto Zoom to appear in her courtroom virtually, Rooney decided to move on, lest she lose the jury.
As for the videos, the defendants learned that they had not received them only after the court recessed during William Christina’s trial testimony.
“We actually have videos of [William] taking the wall down,” Hutchison mentioned for the first time on a Thursday.
Rooney gave the plaintiffs “the weekend” to share the videos with defense counsel. Of the 300 videos, the plaintiffs initially sent only 93 to defense counsel — the ones Catherine had unilaterally determined were relevant — and not until Sunday night. The plaintiffs claimed that was faithful to Rooney’s instruction.
But the judge wrote: “This does not comport with the Court’s memory of the order.”
As for the timing of the disclosure, the plaintiffs explained that they had needed to remove the audio from the recordings, believing the Christinas’ conversation was protected by the marital exclusion. The Christinas should have sought leave from the court before taking that step, Rooney said.
Issues surrounding the video production resurfaced on Nov. 7, following arguments for directed verdicts. The defendants raised issues concerning a photograph that had been entered as a trial exhibit, which the plaintiffs’ expert had testified revealed issues with the installation.
However, the defendants had since been provided another photograph taken about 25 minutes earlier, showing no evidence of the problem that the expert had highlighted.
Based on what Catherine Christina had told him, Hutchison informed the court that the photographs were of different locations of the house.
Signature’s counsel, Seth M. Pasakarnis of Hinckley, Allen & Snyder in Boston, then requested permission to approach the large screen in the courtroom where the photos were displayed.
“Suddenly, without seeking permission from the Court, Catherine, who was sitting in the gallery to the left of the bench, jumped up, crossed the courtroom, approached the screen, and began insisting that the two photographs displayed different areas of the house,” Rooney recounted.
The plaintiffs later acknowledged that the photographs were of the same area, characterizing the submission of the photograph as an “honest mistake.” However, Rooney found that Catherine knew that the trial exhibit was not representative of the condition of the house as delivered.
One of the videos the plaintiffs provided belatedly also appeared to show William Christina splintering a piece of wood as he took a power circular saw and then a crowbar to drywall. The same damage had been documented in a photograph that had served as the basis for the plaintiffs’ expert testifying that the work on the house was an “abomination.”
“An eighth-grade shop teacher would not accept that work,” the witness testified.
It was then determined that a longer video that Catherine had screened out of her initial response to the discovery request showed that she knew that the expert had offered “fraudulent” testimony. Not only that, but several other videos revealed that the expert himself had been present during the shooting of the videos showing William wielding the circular saw and crowbar, Rooney noted.
By not disclosing the videos before trial, the plaintiffs deprived the defense of the opportunity to cross-examine the expert about his conduct at the house, Rooney said.
The videos also demonstrated that William’s testimony had been “intentionally misleading” about when the bulk of the drywall in the house had been removed, according to the judge.
Rooney ruled that the plaintiffs’ two-year delay in producing the 300 videos “was both willful and in bad faith.” Their repeated disregard for the court’s orders “caused unnecessary delay and confusion to the detriment of the jury, the Defendants and their counsel, and the Court.”
The damage from the plaintiffs’ fraud on the court was too great to salvage the proceedings by giving a curative instruction or striking the expert’s testimony in whole or in part, Rooney concluded.
“In the context of this case, the harm was irreparable,” she wrote. “Given the intentionality and gravity of the Plaintiffs’ conduct, the age of the case, the history of the Plaintiffs’ violations of court order, the unfairness of a mistrial to Defendants, and the unwarranted expenditure of court and jury pool resources, the Court reaches the conclusion that the only appropriate remedy is one of dismissal.”
Rooney added that the “circumstances are exacerbated by the fact that Catherine is a member of the bar and is well aware of her obligations under the Rules of Civil Procedure and the Rules of Professional Conduct.”
A month before she dismissed the case, Rooney had already tangled with the Christinas and Hutchison over the plaintiffs’ motion for a mistrial, which was premised on comments the judge had made regarding the plaintiffs’ use of peremptory challenges and “demonstrative gestures of displeasure” Rooney had allegedly directed at them in the jury’s presence.
“As stated on the record, I did not, and have never in my eighteen years on the bench, pointed at anyone while on the bench nor did I make any personal gestures or indications as alleged by Plaintiffs’ counsel,” Rooney wrote.
Rooney’s decision ends what were initially two of the three lawsuits the Christinas filed in 2018 that were subsequently consolidated. Still pending is the Christinas’ suit against a prior contractor and the manufacturer of modular units that the couple alleges showed up on their property damaged.
But there is still some unfinished business in the dismissed case, too. The defendants have filed a motion to recover their attorneys’ fees since the Aug. 20 pretrial conference.
“We think it’s an appropriate remedy in light of what the court has deemed to be their egregious misconduct and fraud on the court,” Pasakarnis tells Lawyers Weekly.
In Pasakarnis’ view, the root of the Christinas’ problems is their failure to appreciate the special regulations that pertain to the modular construction industry in Massachusetts, specifically the requirement to retain the services of a general contractor to oversee the completion of their home, which arrived on site as six separate boxes built in Pennsylvania.
“What they did, in an effort to try to save money, was cut out what they determined to be the middleman, the licensed general contractor, and they attempted to act as their own general contractor, which was obviously in this case a recipe for disaster,” he says.
The plaintiffs are “understandably very disappointed” with Rooney’s ruling and are planning to appeal, Hutchison tells Lawyers Weekly.
“Plaintiffs did not, and would never, purposefully mislead the court (or opposing counsel),” he writes in an email. “They are confident that, once the facts shown in the record are fully considered on appeal, the Appeals Court will conclude that over the course of this six-and-a-half-year litigation, and in connection with literally tens of thousands of pages of discovery exchanged between the parties, there was no conduct whatsoever by the plaintiffs justifying sanctions. Plaintiffs maintain that the dismissal of this action is an unfair and drastic remedy that, upon full recitation and analysis of the facts, will be corrected upon appeal.”