Senator Cook. That is his job.

Mr. KORNHER. He does not think so, sir.

Senator Cook. I wonder why we have a county inspection department, then, anywhere in the United States.

Mrs. KORNHER. I believe that in the past few months, there has been an ordinance passed that heating and air-conditioning-I believe there was a citizen's group that the board of supervisors listened to and passed an ordinance that the heating and air-conditioning now has to be included in inspections.

I believe this has come since our case.

Senator Cook. I was going to say if they are not checking to see that electrical wiring or gas furnaces are not connected the way they ought to be, no wonder there have been gas explosions over there.

Mrs. KORNHER. I do not believe they are capable of knowing this. I had the chief electrical inspector over and he said, "Everything is fine." Yet our heating system did not work. I called the gas company and it was the gas company that told us that the electrical wiring was improper. And the house passed.

He said that they only checked the voltage and the main wiring system to see that it is connected.

They do not check the appliances. They do not care if the dishwasher works or if the air-conditioning works. They do not feel that is essential. Now, the heating, I never did understand myself why they could not check that out.

Mr. KORNHER. I think the record should also show that Mr. Bertoni is only responsible for the structural aspects of inspection.

There are separate inspection departments for plumbing and for electricity.

Senator Cook. Did you go to the electrical inspector?

Mrs. KORNHER. Yes.

Senator Cook. Did they check it out for you?

Mrs. KORNHER. Yes.

Senator Cook. They did?

Mrs. KORNHER. Well, no, excuse me. They came over and when I told them the heating system did not work. They said there was nothing they could do about it. I talked to the head inspector and we got into a very heated argument right in the hallway.

Then I asked him what justified the fact that I had to hire a contractor on a house that was under warranty to have the heating system work?

He said it was my problem, not theirs. And we did just that. The ordinance now says the heating and air-conditioning system must work. At the time, there was no such ordinance.

To my knowledge, plumbers and electricians are bonded in Fairfax County and I tried to get the $178 it cost us to have it rewired back. I got no response from them there, either. We have now taken the case to the small claims court to try and see if we can get it back there. We have never been reimbursed for the heating bill.

Senator Cook. You are talking about appealing your civil suit?
Mr. KORNHER. Yes.

Senator Cook. Did you plead punitive damages in the lower court?
Mr. KORNHER. We did.

Senator Cook. And that would be one basis of appeal?

Mr. KORNHER. Yes.

Senator Cook. That the judge did not allow punitive damages?

Mr. KORNHER. Yes.

Senator Cook. Would you appeal the award?

Mr. KORNHER. No, not the award.

Senator Cook. It seems to me that on appeal, you might be able to get sustained on a matter of having failed to take into consideration the matter of punitive damages, but the court would probably take into consideration the fact that a jury verdict had been rendered and therefore would not wish to overturn that as being minimal on the evidence.

I am not trying to try your case, but it seems to me that would be rather difficult.

Mr. KORNHER. Right.

I think the award of a jury as I see it might cover minimum repairs.

Of course, the extent of damages in terms of workmanship and things of that kind is a matter of judgment and the cost of repairs is a matter of judgment. Two contractors might give you two different prices.

What hurts is that when one subtracts from that judgment the attorneys' fees and the out-of-pocket expenses, there is very little left.

Senator Cook. I have no more questions.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Senator TUNNEY. Thank you, Senator.

Just one last question.

What do you anticipate your total bill for repairs will be?

Mr. KORNHER. The independent contractor's basis of $6,200 was that he would come in on a separate trip to correct each of the 32 items that needed to be corrected.

Senator TUNNEY. Even though there were only 12 violations of the building code?

Mr. KORNHER. No, the 12 violations were the official violations that the County charged the builder with and that went to criminal

court.

Now, the 32 items were the significant items that we went into on our civil suit.

Senator TUNNEY. I see.

Mr. KORNHER. So if one were to assume some economies by doing all of these repairs in a single package, I should say it would probably be possible to make them all at about a $5,000 cost.

Senator TUNNEY. Well, I want to thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Kornher, for your testimony today. I think that what you have given us is a story which has been repeated many times around the country, where people such as yourselves have a right, but your remedy is elusive. Not only is there difficulty getting an attorney to represent your interests because of the costs involved, but also because of the delay in the court system in which you indicated you had to spend 3 days waiting around for your case to be heard.

Senator Cook. That was the criminal case.

Mrs. KORNHER. Yes, that was the criminal case.

It was 11 months, I believe, after our attorney filed the suit that the civil suit got into court, approximately.

But the criminal case took 3 days spread over several months.
Senator TUNNEY. How many?

Mrs. KORNHER. Spread over approximately 6 or 7 months.

Senator TUNNEY. I see.

Then you had almost a year's delay before you had your civil suit brought to trial.

Mrs. KORNHER. Right, it was 11 months.

Senator TUNNEY. Well, it is a rather grotesque situation, and it makes a mockery of justice.

I want to thank you for having related your story in such specific terms.

I think that this is clearly an area for this subcommittee to continue its investigation so we can make access to attorneys more readily available to the average citizen.

Thank you very much.

Mrs. KORNHER. Thank you very much. We appreciate your interest.

Mr. KORNHER. And the opportunity to appear.

Senator TUNNEY. Our third witness is Mr. Peter Weaver, national syndicated columnist of "Mind Your Money." Mr. Weaver is also a teacher.

STATEMENT OF PETER WEAVER, PRESIDENT, WEAVER COMMUNICATIONS, INC. (SYNDICATED CONSUMER WRITER)

Mr. WEAVER. Senator Tunney, Senator Cook, members of the staff, I am very pleased to be here.

From all the letters that have come to me from all over the country, I think this is a vital area that has long been neglected, the area of accessibility to the law. So many of my readers, common citizens, are turned off by the law and I think you are onto an excellent subject.

I am interested to see what happens with this throughout the rest of the session.

My name is Peter Weaver and I am the President of Weaver Communications, Inc., a miniscule company engaged in the businesss of rooting out and publishing information for consumers and people who are worried about personal and family finance matters.

My work appears in a nationally syndicated newspaper column, "Mind Your Money," which is published by some 70 papers, including the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and Philadelphia Inquirer.

I also write a family finance column called "Money Facts" for Woman's Day magazine and a regular column for Washingtonian magazine. Doubleday & Co. recently published a book I wrote called "You, Inc., A Detailed Escape Route to Being Your Own Boss." In this book, I discuss several legal problems, including selecting a family lawyer. Primarily, the book deals with the theme that one should not be condemned to have to work for somebody else all his life.

I also teach consumer journalism at George Washington University.

To the problem at hand. How can the law be made more accessible to the great majority of the people? We have just heard from two people where the law really has not been accessible at all. As most people are well aware, the law is quite accessible to the very wealthy, who can have attorneys or a fleet of attorneys, and to the very poor, but not to all of us in the mangled middle, those who are neither poor nor wealthy.

To the vast millions of workers, consumers, home owners, automobile, and appliance buyers caught in the middle, the law most definitely is not accessible. The big contact we of the middle class, or whatever you want to call it, have with the law is usually with a hefty, armed man called a policeman or state trooper or sheriff.

These armed men have great powers to arrest citizens for traffic violations. That's our main contact with the law. I think it clutters up the courts. We pay and we shut up.

Readers of my newspaper columns have written more than 22,000 letters to me over the 5 years I have been in business.

Many of their letters concern legal matters for which they have no redress. Sure, I can fire off a hot letter to some company or some Government agency and usually get action for the reader. But, the reader cannot do this on his or her own. Why? Because big government and many big organizations don't pay much attention to customers or citizens with small legal complaints.

When, however, someone with power, such as myself through my newspaper column-comes along, the matter is resolved to avoid bad publicity. In a way, this is what the Germans call "revolver-blatt" use of a pistol at someone's head-editorially-to get what you

want.

Action columns do this. They say, "We are investigating for such and such a paper," and the sellers usually caves in because they do not want to get in the papers.

Sometimes, this makes me a sort of mail order judge and jury, which I try not to do, but sometimes have to. I always try to get the reader and the seller, whoever, together and have them work it out and give the reader some "how-to" information on working it out locally.

Many times, I have counseled readers to try the small claims courts in their area or to try the lawyers' referral service offered by some local bar associations.

Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't. Several readers have tried the small claims route and have won their suits. Great elation. I publish these letters in my column to encourage other people that it does work. But other times their State either does not have a small claims court or the court is not well adjusted to common folks' complaints and is more adaptable for businesses to sue consumers for bad debts.

I'd like to quote from a letter written to me recently by one of my readers from California.

Is it possible to get a refund on a $75 registration fee (for a trade school)? I signed a contract to enroll my daughter in a dental technician course this

fall. She found she could not attend and I tried several times to get the refund. But the school said they were reserving a place for my daughter and could not give refunds. Is there any way we can get our money back?

This is typical. If this reader could have (a) had someone read that contract before she signed; or (b) had someone follow up to help get a refund, she would probably have no problem.

So, we have two problems. One is making the law accessible to citizens so they can practice preventive law-knowing in advance that contracts are dangerous, knowing danger signals with warranties and other agreements-and the other is getting a hearing when something goes wrong.

Let's take the last item first. Getting a hearing. I think this is vital to our system. This is where it is really at.

I think we should have neighborhood courts where citizens can get a quick, inexpensive hearing. When they are right, they can get their complaint adjusted or get paid off. When they are wrong they go along with it and they learn something and feel they've been given a fair hearing. That's all they want a fair hearing, make them equals, not the consumer being down here and the company or whatever being up there.

Theoretically, small claims courts are supposed to give a fair hearing for people with complaints of under $1,000, some a little more. But, in practice many of these courts don't fulfill their obligations. In a Virginia court one reader told me; "The judge and the company's lawyer seemed to be old friends *** I was an outsider taking up their time." She had this dreadful problem. She went to a hairdresser and through some of the zilch they put on her head, her hair either fell out or shriveled up. It took months to grow her hair back, if at all. She said she took the case to the lowest court and said:

It seemed to me the Judge and the company's lawyer were old friends. They were talking about their golf game, and I was just an outsider taking up their time.

Senator TUNNEY. In a Virginia Small Claims Court, can an attorney appear for one of the parties?

Mr. WEAVER. I am not sure about his, but I know in the District, an attorney must appear for the defendant. They must have an attorney. I think the complainant does not have to have an attorney. Senator Cook. But they can have an attorney.

Mr. WEAVER. They can, but they do not have to.

Senator TUNNEY. In some States, in the small claims courts, the parties have to go in themselves.

The attorneys are not allowed.

Mr. WEAVER. Yes. I like that idea. There is an interesting little angle of the company having to have an attorney. I will mention this later. In the District of Columbia, which has one of the best small claims courts in the country, many people are afraid to go to the court in the late afternoon or on weekends because it's "in a bad neighborhood." Plaintiffs may win their case only to get bopped on the head when they go out to their car.

Also, too many small claims courts are used by businesses as a sort of collection agency for bad debts and are not well known or accessible to the general public.

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