Legal Question in Credit and Debt Law in Virginia

Re: Not paying final payment on a heat pump insullation

Unfortunately, if the company "substantially complied" -- that is they got the work done, at least most of the way -- the court is likely to agree with them that you should pay. That is, the court will say if you ultimately received the benefit of the insulation, you can't keep the benefit without paying.

So if they failed to do certain things, you will probably need to file a COUNTER CLAIM and charge them for the specific things that they did not do, such as cleaning up, repairng the hole in the wall, etc.

That is, incomplete or bad performance might not be a defense to you paying.

BUT it might be grounds for you to DEDUCT those items from the bill. And to do that you really need to file a counter-claim.

In this case, other than the hole in the wall, your "losses" are probably your own time. So you may have to make up an invoice for your services cleaning up after them and bill them for work that they failed to do, so you had to do it. It hurts that you are billing for your own time, rather than a third party. But it is not impossible.

If you have already had the hole in the wall fixed, you can simply testify to how much it cost you.

But if it has not been done yet, then you have to bring in an expert to give an opinion as to what it would cost if you got it fixed.