Legal Question in Civil Litigation in New York

Re: am being sued

If this "friend" is intent on suing you, then it would be a small claims type of case, and you would be mailed a notice from a local justice court, such as a town, village or city court. In a more serious lawsuit,a process server would be lurking around looking to serve you personally with papers.

You have several options as to how you may want to handle this, depending on your objectives. For example, if it's not about the money, but the principal of the whole thing, then you may desire to fight it and might be willing to spend the money to hire a lawyer. But if the money is a real concern, then you might handle it with a different approach.

Both you and the "friend" could easily spend more than $1,500 on a lawyer, which makes a protracted fight quite unattractive.

First off, if he represented that he was not going to charge you for his service, then there was no "contract" entitling him to get paid. What he offered was a gift. A gratuitous act. Gifts do not have to be repaid. You will have to make that clear to the court if you are sued. A contract requires mutual assent, that is a "meeting of the minds" as to essential terms. He never quoted you a flat fee, or an hourly fee, for his service, and you never agreed to pay a fee.

Second, you must make the point very clear that you never would have engaged his services had you known he was going to charge $1,500. This is very important because there is a cognizable legal claim called unjust enrichment. Unjust enrichment means that somebody provided a benefit to another person and in equity and good conscience, the person that conferred the benefit ought to be fairly compensated for what they did. Innocent people may be unjustly enriched through no fault of their own. I think you have a good defense here that you first asked him if he was going to charge you and he said no. Tell the Court you relied on that representation BEFORE you allowed him to set up the computers, and then his proceeding with the work and expectation that he would be paid something becomes completely unreasonable under the circumstances. Equity and good conscience no longer suggests the "friend" should be compensated.

It is also important to understand that the Court will attempt to settle the dispute and will likely push very hard to get you to agree to pay something. That is purely your choice if you want to settle the dispute. Some considerations are whether you sent any return emails offering to pay something that may suggest an admission of liability that will look bad if you have a trial.

Re: am being sued

If he is in the computer business he is entitled to be paid for his services, on the other hand you have a right to know how much your friend will charge prior to getting the work. I would advise your husband to call his friend up to see if they could work out a compromise. Perhaps you can pay off the bill with 2 or 3 monthly payments at a reduced price. Good luck.

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