Legal Question in Business Law in Washington

My partner and I hired a development company to develop a software/website for us. We signed a contract and agreed to a fixed amount of $25,000. In the contract they estimate it would take about 2-3 months to complete. However it has now been over 8 months and the software is still not complete. They have forced us to start paying for monthly fees on the website (or else they would let those expire as they didn't want to pay them any longer), and now they are telling us they need at least $5,000 more to complete the development (they hired outside for the development side and we assume used the $25,000 to pay themselves). They are also threatening us with bankruptcy if we don't pay them (this is their first job and they don't seem to care about their company), meaning we would lose our investment (correct??). We do not know what to do. One of the developers has a "family full of lawyers" (or so we've been told), and we don't know what our rights are in this situation.


Asked on 3/11/13, 4:36 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys
Charles Cruikshank Cruikshank Law Office-Since 1975

Your rights were initially determined by the contract between your "entity" and a web developer "entity". They have have not performed their duties under a contract which has not been desccribed with any meaningful detail. There is no mention of the basis the other unknown entity type has alleged they cannnot or wiill not perform and since the types of entities, which determine to some degree, liabilities, have not been disclosed, and as virtually no details have been revealed, without which it is not possible to even begin a legal analysis, much less suggest a solution. Review of the contract and the details of each side's contention would suggest the missing, but absolutely necessary, starting point before any reasonable analysis can even be attempted.

Read more
Answered on 3/12/13, 4:14 am


Related Questions & Answers

More Business Law questions and answers in Washington