Paint mega-disaster (long rant)
Thanks for posting.
If anything this will be a WARNING to the other guys who may be contemplating body shops.
It sounds alot like what could have happened to me at the first body shop I took my cuda to, but I caught them before they screwed me too bad.
To make a long story short, i was smart enough to get everything in writing and work was to hault once the paint was stripped to bare metal, but they broke contract, and sand blsated instead of media blasting as promised, and warped the body panels, di a poor job of etch priming, yep right over top of sand.
I did not sue, but I was not in the hole you are in either, I was just out $1000.oo, but hey bait and switched me and now the price of 6-7-k was now $20-k.
I took it to body shop #2 which was also a collision shop, got everything documented and they still cut corners.
They still have to finish up a couple things on my car and they will repaint the car for life if it ever cracks, peels or whatever, and that is all in writing too.
Oh gosh man, I hope you get out of this.
You may also want to call some of your local new stations and threaten the guy with bad newsworthy watchdog type publicity as an alternative to a lawyer.
Sounds like this guy had you right where he wanted you since you had no documentation to fall back on.
Good luck, man that's just plain wrong.