Jets head coach Robert Saleh now has two messes to clean up.
The 42-year-old Saleh, leader of the 2-6 Gang Green, is suing two New Jersey designers and the contractor they brought in to renovate the $2.9 million Morristown, N.J., home he bought in April, claiming the companies ripped him off and threatened to go public to embarrass him if he pursued them, court papers show.
The rookie coach has gotten publicly ribbed for living in a hotel while waiting for the rehab to be completed — all the while having made clear to the workers that he wanted his family to be settled before the football season started in September.
Saleh took his family out of state for weeks during the summer, only to return to find the work unfinished and the house unusable. By August, the coach had had enough, and brought his father, Sam Saleh, in to help referee the work.
Sam Saleh — who owns a Michigan construction business — found a series of inflated bills, missing items that were paid for. and no permits for any of the work, according to court papers.
By early August, the suit says, Saleh had paid the contractor $146,215 for materials worth about $29,000. He had separately paid the designers $87,367.
Saleh’s suit, filed Monday in Morris County Superior Court, alleges fraud, negligence and conspiracy and seeks a jury trial. It claims that the construction mess made the spectacular manse “uninhabitable” for Saleh, his wife, Sanaa and his seven young children, and forced him to hire a new contractor to correct the shoddy and incomplete work the two companies started.
The six-bedroom, eight-bathroom home features a spacious office, enormous living room, an exercise room, a den with an adjoining game room, and a detached two-story carriage house, according to the real estate listing.
The complaint notes that Saleh’s multi-million contract with the Jets was much in the news when he hired defendants, Michelle Shehadi and Nancy Tobin, whose design firm is called Washington + Park. The former San Francisco 49ers defense coordinator inked a five-year deal with Gang Green believed to be worth $5 million a year.
Court papers claim the two designers, along with Robert Meijer, owner of Meijer Construction, “preyed upon Mr. Saleh and his presumed wealth, and his intense focus on his new job as head football coach, by undertaking a series of shoddy, fraudulent, incomplete and defective renovations in the Saleh’s home without permits, without insurance and in most cases without a signed contract or agreement by Mr. Saleh, and otherwise gouged Mr. Saleh with excessive invoicing and billings.”
Tobin and Shehadi talked the coach into more work than he was looking for, lied about how long the work would take, failed to apply for permits for the project or use licensed architects — and overcharged him for work that wasn’t done, the suit claims.
Meijer, who the suit claims Saleh never signed a contract with, is accused of billing for materials used at other jobs, charging thousands more for other materials than they were worth and failing to complete the job in the time they agreed upon.
When he demanded his money back, the suit says, the defendants “threatened to take action intended to embarrass, defame and/or slander Mr. Saleh and his father publicly.”
Once Saleh hired a new contractor, deficiencies in the work done on the home were uncovered, costing him even more, according to court papers.
On Friday afternoon, a Post photographer and reporter observed two laborers sawing lumber and redoing floors, and it was clear that the abode was far from game ready. Two wheel barrows sat on the front lawn and a large Dumpster was plopped between the home and carriage house.
Asked if the Jets coach lived in the house, one of the workers said, “Yes,” but declined further comment.
Saleh is also in the middle of renovations of a young Jets squad that went 2-14 last year and this season sits in the AFC East basement heading into Sunday’s home game versus the first-place Buffalo Bills at MetLife Stadium.
Saleh, a native of Dearborn, MI, is the first Muslim NFL head coach and the 18th full-time head coach in Jets history.
Saleh’s attorney did not respond to a phone message. Meijer declined to comment on the litigation. Shehadi and Tobin did not return an email.
This post first appeared on Nypost.com
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