Dana Andrew LeJune

October 30, 2015, Houston, Texas Our DTPA case arose over 5 years ago over a house we purchased in Houston. We were a recently-married couple buying our first home. Shortly after purchasing this $145,000 home in Copperfield, we began to discover water damage during remodeling. This discovery con...tinued for about a year, our home is completely devastated. After shopping around, we were referred to Dana by another lawyer at a big law firm. (They had fought in a similar case and got mopped up by Dana) As soon as we contacted Dana, requests for documents and information started. On our first visit, he asked if we had gotten the C.L.U.E. Report before buying the house; we said “What’s THAT?” He explained that the homeowner’s insurance industry has, since the early 1990’s, maintained a database of all homeowners’ claims by address in North America. He called his insurance guy, and we had that report in minutes. It showed four water damage claims by the sellers, none of which they disclosed on the seller’s disclosure form. Dana hit the ground running in a way we really didn’t anticipate, and filed suit quickly. It’s over four years later now and he hasn’t slowed down or eased off these criminals we sued, tried the case to jury verdict, and now, are chasing through the bankruptcy courts. It took over three years of stalling and delays on the part of the defendants before we finally got them into a courtroom. It’s tough living in a home with concrete floors, exposed insulation, exposed mold and rot at the base of all the walls, under the floors. The house smells of mold, our clothes, our bed-sheets, our hair. The house has been tested for mold and found incredibly high counts, one of which is toxic. However, being our first home, we could not afford another home to live in, or pay for both an apartment as well as this mortgage. Our house could not be sold, could not be rented, indeed, should not have been lived in, but we had no other choice. That’s where Dana came in, Dana the friend. His support and encouragement gave us the ability to endure our situation. I don’t believe we would have been able to continue to fight without him as most people would have given up long ago. But he was driven to right a serious wrong, and pushed to keep us going, and was a dear friend at times when we hit lows. Trial. The defendants requested a jury trial, they got one. It lasted two full weeks. The trial should not have taken two weeks, but the sellers claimed English was a second language, which caused hours of tedious translation, and their attitude of "we do nothing wrong." The jury deliberated and awarded us well over 1.5 million dollars. More than 10x what we paid for the home. That’s far more than a grand-slam home-run. Dana was brilliant during trial, calm, confident. The defendants entered trial with 5 lawyers, some days 6 or 7 along with their entourage of paralegals. It was almost comical at times when the judge called everyone to the bench. Dana standing alone in front of the judge arguing with a "tribe of lawyers," as one witness commented while on the stand. He won every argument. We later learned that during deliberation, the jury actually wanted to send the defendants to prison. Fully anticipating that a favorable judgment for us would result in the defendants filing for protection with the bankruptcy court, Dana posed questions to the jury so that route would be eliminated. Sure enough, they filed for bankruptcy a few days before the final judgment was entered. It was one year ago this week that we started trial. It’s rather ironic; six years to the day that we moved into our home, the bankruptcy court ruled that the full amount of our judgment is a non- dischargeeable debt, and we can proceed to collect it from these very wealthy people, and finally fix our home. And it is all thanks to Dana. Would I recommend him? I wouldn’t recommend anyone else.

The person I bought my house from had clearly violated the Deceptive Trade Practice Act. I hired Dana after my first attorney seemed inept. Dana was communicative, a good listener and knew exactly what to do. He was thorough in his research and we won the case, which we should have. Winning in Texas ...and being able to collect are two different things. What really made Dana amazing in this case was that he followed his instincts and went the extra mile, which allowed us to unearth the defendent's unprotected assets. Dana was not only my hero but also became a friend.