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The east Mountain resident was looking for work on her home that was comparatively much simpler: a large concrete patio in her backyard complemented by some aggregate stairs on the side of her house.

“I saw the blueprints and I said, ‘Wow, this guy is on the ball. He’s got good stuff going on,’” Shaw said.

“I figured if he’s doing that, he must be able to do this.”

Her initial impressions were buoyed by the contract she signed with the man in July 2022, which stated he was a “bonded craftsman with 10 years experience” and had $2 million in liability insurance.

But it left out one key detail: he had a propensity for abandoning jobs.

In fact, Omre Taha turned out to be a man with a lot of troubles, personal and professional.

By the time Shaw met him, he and his associated companies had been embroiled in more than a dozen lawsuits — the majority as defendants — spanning the Greater pc28����and Hamilton Area over a decade-long stretch, according to court records obtained by The Spectator.

At least five suits concerned Taha’s contracting practices and alleged he left jobs incomplete. Four others were connected to injury claims stemming from serious car crashes. Three more were financial-related, with lenders seeking unpaid credit loans totalling tens of thousands of dollars.

If that wasn’t enough, Taha has also been the recent subject of other fiery misfortunes.

One of his rental properties on Airport Road was destroyed in a fire in April 2020; another on the west Mountain was reduced to rubble after a ghastly April 2021 home explosion sent shock waves felt all over Hamilton.

As the latter hit the housing market early last year as a mere pit of dirt, he was slapped with three civil suits from neighbours who alleged the explosion could’ve been avoided if not for his negligence.

And yet, more troubles still ensued for the smooth-talking contractor.

In December, he started building a three-storey duplex atop the razed property — without a permit. The city says it’s repeatedly ordered construction to stop and issued Taha some 13 provincial offence notices totalling about $9,100.

Bad luck or bad business?

Sitting upright at his kitchen table during an interview with The Spectator last fall, amid a barrage of questions concerning botched contracting jobs, destroyed homes and hefty insurance claims, Taha takes a moment to reflect.

Just a few years ago, he says, business was “booming.” He was under contract for plenty of repair work, possessed a network of good, reliable subcontractors and owned, at one point, as many as a dozen investment properties.

Now he’s buried in lawsuits.

What explains that change — and whether his new-found misfortune is a case of bad lack or bad business — Taha doesn’t really say.

“During COVID, I crashed and started losing everything,” he offers as an explanation.

Taha says the pandemic saw him lose “a lot of employees” and forced him to hire unqualified newcomers to carry out jobs — a decision he calls his “big mistake.”

“When COVID happened, people started getting money from the government and didn’t want to work. I lost a lot of workers and started hiring newcomers,” he says, noting he found people to work for him outside the Wesley Day Centre.

“You get one person and they bring their friends. They all tell you they do concrete or tiles but they don’t. The ones that do know how to do the job, they don’t know how to communicate with the customer.

“With no workers available, I had to find a solution for my customers, but this solution cost me my name. And now I’m suffering.”

But Shaw, too, has suffered, spending some $65,000 — on top of the $25,000 she’d already paid the contractor — to repair months of what she alleged were shoddy renovations in her backyard that she said were repeatedly delayed and ultimately left unfinished.

And she isn’t the only one.

Since 2018, Shaw and at least four other homeowners have sued Taha for what they allege were botched or incomplete repair jobs.

Two of those cases, including Shaw’s, were awarded default judgments last fall, with a Hamilton judge ordering Taha to pay damages in excess of $150,000.

“But it’s wrong I had to go out of my way to do that,” Shaw said of the lawsuit. “He took my money for a job he didn’t do and just walked away — and he’s done it before.”

On Jan. 9, Taha’s lawyer filed a motion asking for Shaw’s judgment to be set aside. The motion says Taha didn’t file a statement of defence in the case due to financial hardship; it also argues the damages Shaw sought in her claim were excessive. The motion will be heard by a judge Feb. 15.

The three other contracting-related cases against Taha remain before the courts and none of their allegations have been proven. Just one case — a claim alleging Taha and a company called Brothers Contracting deserted an incomplete Mountain home renovation — was answered by a statement of defence, in which Taha admitted to owning a “few corporate businesses” but denied all other allegations, including a purported association with Brothers Contracting.

In his sit-down interview with The Spec that spanned more than an hour, Taha spoke candidly, offering his version of events to contrast allegations in yet-defended court claims. A more recent phone call to ask about the unsanctioned build on his exploded Mountain property was far less convivial, though, with Taha threatening to sue the newspaper, and saying a “a big war” would ensue if it published his name, comments from his previous interview or any information about the ticketed property.

But back in the fall, he conceded to having trouble with clients, attributing the disputes to “miscommunication” and personal financial hardships that caused him “to hire (workers) who were unprofessional.”

As for claims that he abandoned jobs or left them incomplete, he said they’re not true.

“I’m not angel; I’m a human, I make mistakes. If (the clients) came to me and said, ‘Omre, this isn’t what I liked. I need something different, something worth my money,’ then it’s very simple. I have insurance, why not use it?” he said, later producing a copy of his company’s commercial insurance, which covers up to $2 million in liabilities.

All five contracting-related suits Taha has faced in recent years allege he left jobs incomplete. None said he offered insurance to rectify deficient work claims. Asked why, Taha said: “They never asked me. Nobody ever said, ‘I don’t like the work. Can you fix it?’”

Others argue the opposite.

In Shaw’s since-concluded lawsuit, it was alleged Taha abandoned a job at her Ashcroft Drive home in December 2022 — about five months after starting — before ignoring her repeated requests to fix what she considered shoddy workmanship.

“The defendants made representation that work would be completed in a timely and professional manner which were false and misleading and constituted a negligent misrepresentation,” according to Shaw’s statement of claim filed June 21.

Other claims in Shaw’s $90,000 civil suit against Taha and Taha Development Group Inc. — one of several companies tied to his contracting business — included:

• The side stairs of her home not being uniform height, with some steps off by more than three inches;
• Insulation around a window bay being removed and not replaced, leaving basement rental tenants cold;
• Concrete for her back patio poured in November without the necessary heating;
• Workers starting a fire with her wood to stay warm while pouring concrete;
• Concrete splashed on the sides of her home;
• And a garbage bin left for weeks on her driveway, blocking a vehicle parked in the garage.

The claim also alleges about a quarter of the $25,000 Shaw spent was paid out to Subwork Inc., which it says is a “non-existent” Ontario corporation.

While Subwork Inc. can’t be found in the province’s corporate directory, records obtained by The Spectator show Sub Works Inc. is registered as an active corporation. Taha was listed as its director from February 2018 to March 2021.

In his interview, Taha provided lengthy responses to the claims in Shaw’s lawsuit.

He said it’s true that work at Shaw’s house was delayed — but that was because there was a big, boulder-sized rock coming out of the swimming pool which, until removed, impeded his ability to start on time. It’s also true, he added, that his workers started a fire with Shaw’s kindling.

“Yeah, absolutely,” he said. “They asked. They were cold. I tried to start the job before the weather got cold but (Shaw) didn’t remove the rock.”

While Taha denied leaving the job incomplete at first, eventually he said his work wasn’t done “100 per cent.”

“I still had to wash (the concrete), to seal it, to cut it … But she claimed the job wasn’t done right — did you have a concrete engineer come and take a sample to check it was bad?” he said, adding Shaw’s stairs were “perfect, 100 per cent.”

“I have pictures, all this is going to be presented in court.”

It wasn’t. Justice Andrew Goodman rendered a default judgment after Taha failed to file a statement of defence. Taha has since filed a motion asking for that judgment to be set aside, saying in court documents that he previously wasn’t able to file a statement of defence or retain counsel in the case due to financial hardship.

In his interview, Taha further claimed Ali Akhtar and Fatima Khan — who allege the contractor walked out on a job at their Mississauga home — are using “the same story, the same lawyer” as Shaw in their ongoing legal challenge against him.

Akhtar and Khan launched a lawsuit Aug. 25, 2023, against Taha, Taha Development Group and another contractor (who referred him to them) for $188,000, citing breach of contract and negligent misrepresentation.

According to a statement of claim, Taha was contracted to repave the couple’s driveway, redo their front and sidesteps, and build them a basement apartment up to legal code in August 2022.

Over the next four months, the couple paid him or his associated companies $60,000 in cheques and cash, the claim states.

The claim alleges Taha then came to the couple in December 2022 telling them he “did not have enough money to complete” the work and “would need to wait until another client pays him.”

The couple were forced to take out a line of credit and spend more than $67,000 to rectify his deficient work, according to the claim.

That includes the unfinished basement, which was to be completed in September 2022 and has caused the couple $20,000 in lost rental revenue, the claim states.

It also includes the driveway that was left unpaved, with broken concrete and in unsafe condition, according to the claim. The claim states Akthar’s car tire was punctured by materials left on the driveway, while Khan’s mother slipped on it and injured her wrist, spending “several days in hospital recovering.”

Taha admitted he left the excavated driveway as a pit of broken concrete — but said that was through no fault of his own.

“When my (workers) came twice to do the driveway, (Akhtar and Khan) refused because now they wanted interlock instead of concrete,” he said of the couple in an interview. “But I don’t do interlock.”

He added of the allegedly unfinished basement: “I finished everything in the basement, but I have nothing to do with blueprints. I have nothing to do with cities. I have nothing to do with inspections. I do labour only.”

More legal troubles

Litigation tied to the contractor’s workmanship aren’t Taha’s only problems.

At least four of the roughly dozen lawsuits he or his associated companies have faced in the past decade are connected to personal injury claims from serious car crashes.

In two since-closed cases from 2016, Taha was a plaintiff, suing a pair of insurance companies for around $200,000 in unpaid income replacement benefits.

Taha said in a statement of claim against RBC Life Insurance and Certas Direct Insurance that he suffered “catastrophic impairment” after a collision in Vaughan in January 2014, and was entitled to income loss benefits because he couldn’t work.

The companies asked an Oshawa judge to dismiss the challenges because of Taha’s alleged “misrepresentations/non-disclosures.”

According to a statement of defence by RBC, Taha’s insurance policy with the company lapsed about a month before the crash because his bank account had closed and monthly payments were unable to be withdrawn.

The statement said Taha applied for a new policy with the company in April 2014, about five months after the collision. In that application, Taha responded “no” to a question asking whether his daily activities were restricted by injuries and “yes” to a question asking whether he was a Canadian citizen, which the statement of defence alleged he was not at the time.

Certas Insurance, meanwhile, contended in its statement of defence that the injuries Taha suffered in the crash were minor and that, by 2016, he wasn’t suffering a substantial inability to work because of it.

Both of Taha’s claims were eventually dismissed.

Meanwhile, at present, Taha is a defendant in two ongoing civil cases that allege his negligence contributed to serious car crashes.

One of them was filed by a Hamilton woman last April. She alleged in a statement of claim that Taha was driving “at an excessive rate of speed” when he allegedly made an unsafe lane change near King and Tisdale streets, causing another car to “violently” strike her as she stood outside a building in 2013.

The claim, which seeks $1.1 million in damages, said the woman was hospitalized for a week and bound to a wheelchair for three months after the crash.

No statement of defence has been filed, but Taha said in his interview the crash “has nothing to do with me.” It’s unclear if he plans to contest the claim.

The other lawsuit was filed in March 2022 by an associate of Empire Restoration and Building Solutions Inc., one of Taha’s contracting businesses.

A statement of claim said the associate was driving Taha’s pickup truck at a low-rate of speed to a job in Ajax when its left tire suddenly blew, causing him to lose control, strike a pole and suffer serious injuries requiring hospitalization.

The claim, seeking $1.5 million in damages, alleges Taha failed to maintain the truck in a fit condition, including keeping underinflated tires that posed high risk for blowing out. No statement of defence has been filed.

Taha said he never heard of the lawsuit until The Spectator raised it to him.

“If you didn’t tell me, I wouldn’t know,” he said. “This guy (suing) is my friend; I have a relationship with him. His truck broke down and he asked to borrow my truck.”

Other court cases point to Taha’s financial troubles, with three companies suing him and his associated businesses in the past two years for unpaid credit loans totalling around $96,000, according to court documents.

A Hamilton judge recently awarded a default judgment of $24,000 to one of the companies, Turkstra Lumber, who court records show sold building materials to Taha’s construction company for various projects last year.

The other two credit cases were settled out of court, according to financial documents provided by Taha.

Late-night explosion

For all the lawsuits, there is another type of unrelenting chaos that has seemed to surround Taha in recent years.

Downright bad luck.

Or at least that’s how he explains the ghastly home explosion on April 16, 2021, which reduced his bungalow at 279 Bonaventure Dr. to a mere pit of shrubs and dirt.

Early last year, Taha put the former west Mountain rental property back on the housing market. Then he was hit with three civil suits from affected neighbours who allege his negligence led to the fiery incident.

The lawsuits — one filed last March by the owners of 283 Bonaventure, the other two in April by the owners and a rental tenant of 277 Bonaventure — collectively seek $600,000 in damages and accuse Taha of failing to cap a natural gas pipeline at the home, which was undergoing construction at the time. They further allege he negligently left smoking materials with a heat or open-source flame unattended, and retained “incompetent” contractors without the expertise to prevent an explosion.

None of the allegations have been proven in court and Taha has yet to file a statement of defence to any of the claims.

The explosion came just a month after Taha purchased the home for $655,000, according to property records.

The records show it was his second time owning the suburban bungalow just east of Upper Paradise Road, which he first bought in October 2016 before selling it less than a year later.

“I sold it to a friend (whom) I owed money to,” Taha said of the August 2017 transaction. “Then I got it back from him before the accident.”

Taha called the explosion at 279 Bonaventure “the biggest loss I’ve ever had in my life.” Just days before it happened, he claims he had agreed to sell the home to people whose identity he wouldn’t disclose.

“When the explosion happened, the property was sold,” he said. “The paperwork was done and I was supposed to get the cheque by the end of the week.”

Asked to provide a bill of sale for that exchange, Taha offered only a mortgage loan agreement that listed him as the borrower and a numbered company as the lender. There is no indication on the document of a potential sale.

The Ontario Fire Marshal previously told The Spectator the explosion stemmed from an unsuspicious natural gas build up.

Taha said he had “nothing to do with” the incident and feels badly for the neighbours now suing him.

“I feel sorry for the neighbours and what happened to their houses, but they fixed them through their insurance,” he said. “Their houses were piece(s) of garbage and now their houses are very nice.”

About a year after the explosion, Taha sued the insurance provider for 279 Bonaventure for more than $1.5 million.

He argued in a statement of claim that the coverage he obtained from Certas Insurance in March 2021 — capped at $521,000 — was inadequate “for his circumstances,” adding the company’s selling agent failed to give him “competent advice.”

Certas asked a Hamilton judge to dismiss the action last June.

They alleged in a statement of defence that Taha was notified of modifications to his insurance coverage April 7, 2021, after he informed them the home was vacant. The claim says Certas never heard back from Taha until after the explosion.

The case remained active as of December.

In an interview, Taha said he’s seeking more money from Certas because he believes their valuation of the property was incorrect. He added he wants to construct a new home atop the rubble that was once his bungalow, but needs money to build.

Those comments came in late October.

In December — despite no court decision in his insurance case and default judgments in two contracting-related claims that saw him ordered to pay over $150,000 in damages — Taha started building a three-storey duplex at 279 Bonaventure.

The city says he has no building permit to do so.

Since Dec. 6, Taha has been issued 13 provincial offence notices totalling some $9,100 in connection with the unsanctioned work at the property, according to the city, who said in a statement it’s repeatedly ordered the owner to halt construction.

“The city continues to apply progressive enforcement measures for the continued lack of co-operation by the property owner,” said Bob Nuttall, manager of the city’s building inspections division, adding Taha’s application for a building permit was never granted before work began at the property.

Nuttall noted Taha has since applied for a minor variance application that, if approved, would allow him to construct a single-family dwelling with a secondary unit. His case will be heard by the city’s committee of adjustment Feb. 13.

Reached by phone Jan. 31, Taha didn’t respond to questions asking how he’s funding the project or whether he’ll comply with the litany of city orders. Instead, he threatened to sue The Spectator if any information about the property was published.

Taha’s tone in the call was a far cry from his transparent demeanour in his interview last fall, when he said he also needed money to build on a plot of land in Mount Hope — where another one of his properties was destroyed in a fire almost a year before the bungalow explosion.

The contractor’s rental property at 8438 Airport Rd. E. was engulfed in flames March 2, 2020, after he said a tenant “got drunk, passed out and left the stove on.”

The fire caused extensive damage to the home, according to a $200,000 lawsuit Taha filed in March 2022 against Certas Insurance, who he alleged breached contract by holding back insurance payments.

While Certas made “various actual cash payments” to Taha in connection to the fire, he alleged in a statement of claim in March 2022 that he was owed repair and replacement costs.

Certas notified Taha of its intent to defend his claim in March 2023. He dropped the case a few weeks later.

The Airport Road property is now on the market.

Lives ‘turned upside down’

After a story about the lawsuits connected to the explosion at 279 Bonaventure was published by The Spectator on July 4, Sarah-Jane Shaw reached out over email.

She said there was more to the man named in the story.

“I wanted his shoddy work practices to also be public,” Shaw later said in a phone call with The Spectator. “I wanted people to know so it doesn’t happen to them.”

Before pursuing legal action for her botched renovations, Shaw shared her “nightmare” experience about Taha on Facebook.

She said several people reached out to her with similar stories about the contractor — including Akhtar and Khan, who declined to comment for this story on the advice of their lawyer.

While Shaw took a financial hit from the botched contracting job, she said her legal challenge was more about principle than money.

“I didn’t know if I would get my money back, but I knew this guy needs to be stopped,” she said.

Others, meanwhile, are more desperate to see a financial return.

Michael Cappadocio told The Spectator his life has been upended since he hired Taha in 2019 to build a second-storey addition at his Dundas home that would serve as a future living space for his daughter with special needs.

Four years later, after spending tens of thousands of dollars, it remains unfinished.

“Our lives have been turned upside down and there is no resolution in sight,” said Cappadocio, whose $365,000 lawsuit against Taha for breach of contract, negligence and negligent misrepresentation remains before the courts.

Cappadocio said he hired Taha through a reputable referral.

Beyond a second storey added atop the home, work at the property also included building a sunroom and detached garage in the backyard, according to a statement of claim filed in 2021.

In June 2019, Cappadocio entered into a contract with Subworks Inc., a company which the claim states Taha misrepresented as a licensed and bonded contractor. The claim alleges the company was not an active corporation in Ontario.

He paid Taha more than $246,000, or 87 per cent of their agreed upon contract, before the contractor abandoned the job in September 2020 with several portions incomplete or deficient, according to the claim.

“The Cappadocios have been stripped of their life savings and left stranded with an incomplete project rife with deficiencies which have resulted in a structure that does not meet requirements of the Ontario Building Code, is a danger to the health and safety of the occupants, and has substantially reduced the property’s inherent value,” the claim states.

The claim also says the family has been forced to dip into their retirement savings and their daughter’s registered disability savings plan to mitigate damages from the incomplete work.

“Mr. Cappadocio has developed carpal tunnel and trigger finger in an attempt to complete the work the contractors have left outstanding,” it added.

As a multi-generational household, Cappadocio told The Spectator his family had “no option but” to commence legal action to recoup losses from the botched project. He added his lawyers volunteered for the case and are working pro bono.

“We have undertaken this claim in a last resort effort to recover our damages and have this desperately needed renovation completed.”

‘If I had the chance today …’

When The Spectator left a letter with a dozen questions for this story on Taha’s doorstep in mid-October, he phoned the paper within a few short days.

He wanted to talk and clear his name.

At his family townhome on the outskirts of Hamilton, Taha, donning a white T-shirt and blue jeans, opened his door in welcoming fashion, greeting a Spectator reporter with firm handshake and offering him something to drink.

It didn’t take long to notice some of the personality traits his contracting clients said he harboured.

He’s a gregarious smooth talker who gesticulates often, a family man and Middle East expat clearly proud of his life journey.

He presents himself as an innocent open book, eager to answer any and all questions. After cancelling an initial interview because of a dental procedure, he texted a Spectator reporter a photo of himself on a dentist chair, his mouth agape and a couple of teeth removed.

“I wanted you to come so I can clear my name and explain,” Taha said, walking up a flight of stairs before sitting at his kitchen table.

With The Spectator’s printed questions placed in front of him, he went down the list one by one, offering an answer for pretty much everything.

At brief points in the interview, he appeared almost despondent or like a man down on his luck, such as when he talked about how his business has suffered or how two of his rental properties were ravaged by fires in the span of just one year.

At others, he appeared defensive and deflective, like when he attributed his troubles with contracting clients to hiring unqualified newcomers off the street.

“I try to do nice, I try to do good to people and hire people after the shortage of construction people (during COVID). But in the end, this bit me back — badly. And today, there’s nobody around. I’m the one who got screwed,” he said.

“Every one of them, I helped them, and I got screwed from their ability. And now all of them have moved on with their life, their work, their everybody. They don’t even care if I got sued for 400 grand or 300 grand or 200 grand.”

But then there were shades of humility and remorse, a longing to go back in time and fix what he called his big mistakes.

As he railed against the unqualified workers he hired, he interrupted himself and stuck his hand out a little.

“And I just want you to put it in there,” he said. “I am really, really, really, really, sorry for everyone I hurt, intentionally or unintentionally. And if I had the chance today fix anything with a customer, I’m willing to do that.”