InterNACHI® Countersues ASHI: Press Release

May 14, 2020 update:  EBPHI loses in court again.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

InterNACHI® Continues with its Member-Focused Agenda 
While Mounting Vigorous Defense to Cases Brought 
by ASHI and Its Spinoff, EBPHI

BOULDER, Colo. (March 12, 2020) – Over the preceding twelve months, the International Association of Certified Home Inspectors – InterNACHI® – has continued to grow its membership on a worldwide basis. There's little doubt that InterNACHI's growth is due to our ongoing commitment to focusing on delivering value to our members through the numerous benefits and resources we provides. Going forward, InterNACHI's focus will remain on maximizing the value we provide our members.  

While continuing to pursue our member-focused agenda, we also continue in our vigorous defense of a combined lawsuit brought by our competitors. Recall that in 2017, InterNACHI’s sole national competitor, the American Society of Home Inspectors (ASHI), and its spinoff, the Examination Board of Professional Home Inspectors (EBPHI), filed two federal lawsuits in ASHI’s hometown of Chicago against InterNACHI® and its founder, Nick Gromicko, over comments Nick made on the InterNACHI® forum about ASHI and the National Home Inspector Examination (NHIE).  On April 11, 2018, the court in Chicago dismissed EBPHI’s complaint.  Two weeks later, ASHI voluntarily withdrew its lawsuit.

InterNACHI® thought this distraction was over.  However, ASHI and EBPHI re-filed their complaints in July 2018 in Nick and InterNACHI’s home state of Colorado. Since then, InterNACHI®, Gromicko, ASHI, and EBPHI have been engaged in those two lawsuits that have been consolidated into one case and scheduled for trial in July 2020.  

Although ASHI has apparently decided that its limited resources are better used for litigation than innovation, InterNACHI® has both defended itself and redoubled its efforts to expand its member benefits. Consistent with our focus on delivering value to our members, we suggest that home inspectors review the benefits offered by InterNACHI®, listed at www.nachi.org/benefits, and compare them to the benefits offered by ASHI, and decide for themselves why InterNACHI’s membership has grown so rapidly and why ASHI’s membership has not only not maintained but actually declined.  

For those who desire additional information regarding the background of these time-consuming and resource-intensive lawsuits, consider the following, keeping in mind that ASHI and EBPHI are two very closely aligned organizations. In the first federal case, EBPHI alleged that it was damaged in excess of $500,000 in 2016 because of Nick’s name-calling of the NHIE in as a “joke,” a “stupid piece of crap,” and similar statements consistent with Nick’s belief that the NHIE was not a high-quality, minimum-competency test for home inspectors.   InterNACHI® and Gromicko are vigorously defending themselves on the grounds that Nick’s stated opinions about the NHIE were both accurate and constitutionally protected speech.   It is particularly telling that an article in the January 2018 issue of the ASHI Reporter revealed that even EBPHI’s leadership realized the NHIE had become overbroad by testing on multiple ancillary services that are outside the scope of the job of a home inspector.  Nevertheless, EBPHI waited until January 2019 to revise its test, which confirmed that Nick was right – the NHIE was testing on topics outside the scope of the job of a home inspector for almost a decade.    

In the second lawsuit, ASHI alleges that it was damaged in excess of $500,000 due to a joke Gromicko made on the InterNACHI® forum in 2017 about ASHI being taken over by NAMBLA.   Common sense suggests that no reasonable person would take Nick’s comment seriously.  In any event, ASHI’s current predicament wasn’t actually caused by Nick’s joke. ASHI and EBPHI have tied up organizational and judicial resources mounting two federal cases over mere words. 

Although InterNACHI® believes that it and ASHI should compete in the marketplace and not in the courtroom, once forced into the fray, InterNACHI® could not pass up the opportunity to address a longstanding issue with ASHI’s advertising.  As such, InterNACHI® filed a counterclaim against ASHI alleging that ASHI’s slogan “Educated. Tested. Verified. Certified.” that appears on every page of ASHI’s website is false and/or misleading because ASHI does not require ASHI Associates to be any of those things before collecting their member dues and awarding membership.  In fact, ASHI does not tell the public that its membership admissions process confirmed that many of its members were convicted of violent felonies.  After InterNACHI® filed its counterclaim challenging ASHI’s representations regarding its Associate Members, ASHI kicked out over 10% of its members.  Again, Nick was proven right.  

In the meantime, InterNACHI® will continue in its focus on delivering value to its members. But since InterNACHI® has been compelled to defend itself, it looks forward to a public trial that will reveal ASHI’s alarming approach to background checks of its members, and the surprising details about EBPHI’s test development practices.   

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With 25,000 members, InterNACHI® is the world's largest association of home inspectors, and the only home inspector training organization that's accredited by the U.S. Dept. of Education.  InterNACHI® offers thousands of dollars' worth of free member benefits, as well as peer and mentor support, all to help its members succeed.  Find out more at www.nachi.org.