Suit against Terminix settled out of court
Posted on Wednesday, March 19, 2008
A lawsuit involving termite damage, which was filed by a Morrilton-area couple against The Terminix International Co. LP, is no longer scheduled to go to a Conway County Circuit Court jury Tuesday.
William and Gail Dickens have reached an out-of-court settlement with Memphis-based Terminix, according to Terminix and the Dickenses’ lead attorney in the case, Tom Campbell of Birmingham, Ala.
Details of the agreement reached late Friday are confidential, “however, we can say that the [Dickenses ] are very pleased,” Campbell wrote in a Tuesday e-mail.
In December 2005, the couple rejected an offer from Terminix to accept a judgment for $ 200, 000, an amount they considered insufficient to cover repairs, litigation expenses, attorney’s fees and compensation for their anguish in the case.
“At times I didn’t know if I could go on with all this !” Gail Dickens wrote in an e-mail Monday evening, referring to the approximately 10-year dispute between her family and the nation’s largest pest-control company.
The couple had sued Terminix alleging fraud, breach of warranty, negligence and breach of contract.
Dickens said she received many calls “from all over Arkansas,” after an article printed in Sunday’s Arkansas Democrat-Gazette about her battle to have Terminix stand behind its termite contract on the Dickenses’ 3, 000-square-foot home overlooking the Arkansas River.
“There are so many people out there with similar stories to mine,” Dickens wrote in her e-mail. “If we can educate the public to what these pest control companies are doing to everyone, maybe some of the wrongful things they do will stop. I’m not foolish enough to think we can stop them altogether, but maybe we can slow them down a little.”
Campbell continues to represent Arkansas homeowners in three lawsuits involving termite damage.
In two of those cases, one against Terminix and one against Atlanta-based Orkin Exterminating Co. Inc., the plaintiffs are seeking statewide class-action status. If certified, that would permit any Arkansan with similar complaints against the companies to join the actions and share in any monetary judgments.
The pool of current and former Terminix customers in Arkansas exceeds 100, 000, while the class of potential Orkin litigants numbers in the tens of thousands.
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