Legal Question in Business Law in California
Breach of Contract with Independant Contractor
We recently hired an independant person to do our website. We agreed on a price and the terms, and he said time after time in person, on the phone, and in emails, that it will be done by a certain date and that he is going to do everything himself. As the days roll by, we see no content. We pressure him to show us something, and he tells us we need to buy a web template that is already made from a third party. We deduct it from the price we are paying him. Deadline is missed and he says he has hired other people to do it for him. Deadline continues to be missed and says he was worked on it for two weeks, 20 hours a day. What he has done is cleary an hours worth of work, because we have seen nothing.
We paid him one third up front and we want a portion of that back. He says we owe him money. We say he did almost nothing and had other people do it for him.
Could we make him pay the difference to have someone else do our website now, and demand some of the money we gave him back? We hired him for his exerprise, not someone elses.
2 Answers from Attorneys
Re: Breach of Contract with Independant Contractor
Howdy:
If it was a personal services contract, and that was an integral part of what you wanted, then he'd be required to perform all the work. Usually, the skill has to be unique, like a singer.
Here, I'm not sure there'd be a problem with him farming out the work, as long as he reviewed everything that was done. (This assumes, of course, that something _was_ actually done!)
If he is in breach of the contract, then you can recover from him the difference between what you paid for the job, and what he agreed to do the job for. And, you can recover any unearned money you've paid him.
As asked earlier, the amount of money involved will dictate where the action is filed. It may be something that you'd pursue in small claims court, since you're just looking for a money judgment.
Also, if you hired him to build a website and he had you buy an off-the-shelf product for it, and you later don't actually need that product, you may be able to recover that cost from him, too.
Hope this helped.
rkr
Re: Breach of Contract with Independant Contractor
Looks like breach of contract. How much did you pay?
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