A visit to the “The People’s Court” helped flush a top city plumber’s career down the toilet.
Elaine Ward — who was one of only three women in New York City with a master plumber’s license — got in deep doo-doo after she appeared on the long-running legal reality show in 2009 and it was revealed she committed a violation of industry regulations.
Ward was trying to hammer out a dispute with the owner of a Brooklyn storefront being turned into a day- care center when it emerged that she knew the work was being done by an unqualified individual — a major no-no under city code.
When the episode aired, one of the viewers was a nosy official from an industry watchdog, the Plumbing Foundation.
A complaint was then fired off to the Buildings Department, landing Ward in very hot water.
She was stripped of her license in September, in a decision that was posted this week.
A trailblazer in the male-dominated plumbing world, Ward came to regret her decision to take to the public airwaves, describing her TV experience in official city documents as “a disaster” and “a total embarrassment.”
“She’s accused of stuffing the pipes,” the show’s announcer intoned in introducing Ward’s segment, which aired on Oct. 2, 2009.
In the end, the property owner was awarded $1,500 of the $5,000 he demanded to cover the hiring of a second master plumber to replace Ward.
“She rationalized that she appeared on the show because she was concerned about the time that could have elapsed had the matter proceeded through Civil Court,” Administrative Law Judge Ingrid Addison would report nearly two years.
“She also suggested that Civil Court judges are biased against contractors . . . Moreover, the show bore the financial burden if the ruling was adverse to her.”
As it turned out, a copy of “The People’s Court” episode that ignited the complaint wasn’t allowed into evidence because, Addison said, no one from the industry group appeared to attest that the tape hadn’t been altered or edited.
The owner in the case also refused to cooperate.
But relying on Ward’s own statements, the judge ordered that her license be revoked for allowing someone unknown to her to putter with the pipes.
“The person whom the owner retained to perform the actual plumbing work was not even remotely connected to respondent [Ward] or her business and, in fact, respondent revealed to investigators that she harbored reservations about his qualifications. Yet she forged ahead and filed for the permit,” Addison said in a decision issued Sept. 1.
Once a master plumber receives a permit from the city he — or she — is responsible for insuring that the job is completed by licensed plumbers whom they employ and supervise.
Ward could not be reached yesterday.