PENDLETON — Two-and-a-half years on and Wes Brooks, a disabled veteran, and Adair Homes Inc., a homebuilding company based in Washington State, remain locked in a legal battle over a home the company built near Pendleton.

Brooks and his wife, Ashley, contracted with the company in December 2017 to build a house after a fire tore through their previous home. But he said things weren’t going right with Adair Homes from the start.

“We tried to stop the build,” Brooks said, “and they wouldn’t let us because of the contract that we signed. They reassured us several times, ‘this all will get fixed, you won’t have any issues.’”

But, a litany of unaddressed issues with the house has continued to plague the couple and their two young children, Jaxx and Raiden. From uneven walls and house siding that flies off in the wind to incomplete floors and uneven trim, the problems are apparent as soon as you step foot in the house.

“It’s been a living hell,” Brooks said.

When Brooks decided to create the public Facebook group Quality of Adair Homes’ Reviews to publicize his complaints, the company responded with a defamation lawsuit for $550,000 in damages.

According to the lawsuit, the company alleges Brooks has “instituted an active smear campaign against Adair” with his Facebook group.

The lawsuit states Brooks created a Facebook page improperly using Adair’s trademarked name and that it contains false and inaccurate statements. Adair said some of these false statements include that the HVAC system was incorrectly sized and insufficient for the home, that “Adair is ripping them off by their subcontractor’s fudging the numbers” and items still are not fixed because Brooks told the company to take no action.

On Monday, Sept. 20, Brooks filed an answer in the Umatilla County Circuit Court denying these allegations.

In an interview, Brooks said he never made a comment that HVAC system was incorrectly sized or insufficient. Instead, “My argument was that the HVAC system wasn’t what we had purchased in the original plans,” he said.

As for the subcontractor “fudging the numbers,” Brooks said it was not a statement he made. Instead, it was a subcontractor who got on the Facebook group and posted a screenshot of a text exchange he had with an Adair superintendent who he claimed shorted him $3,500. Brooks said he commented on the post to clarify the subcontractor’s message.

And while it’s true that items still are not fixed, Brooks said he told them that he’d prefer the subcontractors stopped because they were doing more damage every time they came to work.

“They would come out to rip out the kitchen floor and then damage the wall as they’re doing it,” he said. “So I was getting kind of tired of it because they kept sending the same subcontractors out every time.”

In the original complaint, Adair alleged that through social media “Brooks has intentionally interfered with Adair’s prospective business relationship with new or potential customers.” But, Brooks is not alone in his complaints about the company’s business practices.

While there are legitimate questions and several positive reviews of Adair Homes on Brooks’ nearly 2,500 member Facebook group, the majority of posts paint the company in a negative light — with users complaining of a long list of issues by the company. Some problems range from the company being six months overdue on construction to flooding.

Brooks also recently started a TikTok account showing problems with his house. The account has garnered more than 4 million views.

Joshua Biggs, the senior vice president of strategic growth for Adair Homes, said the company could not comment on an active court case.

Regardless, the family continues to live in a home with flooring ripped out, bending walls, exposed outlets and improperly installed windows that allows dust to spread throughout the house when wind blows.

“The electrical is really what scares me the most,” Brooks said.

Close to bankruptcy and without a lawyer due to legal costs over the last two years, Brooks said he reached out to every government agency he could think of that could help, including the Oregon Attorney General’s Office and the FBI, but so far nothing has been done.

“I feel like there’s no one doing anything to protect the consumers,” Brooks said. “I feel like the government is failing us.”