Main Contractor witholding £100,000

[petercj]

Hi, I am really sorry for your troubles, hope it is sorted.

I went to court recently and it all went down to paperwork

1. do you have a contract?
2. if so does it say that he will pay you on time and if you are late he will charge a fee per day for non completion on time?
3. do you have any emails or paperwork to the equilavent as above?
4. offering a solution will not help your case in any way. although the judge will say to him "why have you not paid him?" to the contractor and he will come out with every excuse in the book, the judge will then turn around and say "this still does not make sense, why have you not paid him?"
5. if you have all the paperwork and it is all in your favour, you can actually charge interest on the amounts that are unpiad, lose of work and court fees off the contractor.

do what you can at this hard time to pay the lads, suppliers i.e. and take him to court asap as said before, he will get the judgement against him, even if he doesnt turn up to court.

Contract law is quite involved - a contract doesn't have to be in writing, it can be made verbally, and in some circumstances it can be assumed. Obviously if the contact isn't in writing then the issue of proving its existence arises. The best way is to have everything clearly defined in writing. But then no doubt this guy knows that too, and may have been astute enough to skew things in his favour, but then a good solicitor might say otherwise. When people are talking about big money and promising work its all too easy to miss the in's and out's of the T&Cs.

I very much agree with Ray regarding the need for ladyapprentice to avoid letting her emotional responses get in the way of sorting this matter out. The going rate for a solicitor starts at around £200 per hour, and they can run up a bill of thousands in no time at all.

If it were me, I would think hard about getting the job back on track so that he has no excuse for paying up.

Then once the cheque is cleared, tell him what a *%^*$£"^?//&*%%*** he is!

 

[gasmanrob]

people like this make me sick! really gets my back up. one bell end's decisions could cost two blokes their company and numerous workers their houses just because he thinks hes a bit of a gangsta! it is so hard not to make it personal. even im getting angry and i have no involvement.
I really hope the courts see it your way and take this bloke to the cleaners however i fear he may already be expecting this and has geared himself up to be made bankrupt. might be worth doing some leg work yourself with company's house etc and see if he has done it before as the courts may deal with him differently.
as others have said you definitely need a good solicitor for this sort of money. i wish you all the best in this and please keep us up dated.

 

[jtsplumbing]

Ho the joy of working for builders, never known one yet who wont stich someone up, trying to get paid will take forever ! & you still have to find the money to pay your supplyers ! how long do you think they will put off being paid ??