As above really mate. But you will be claiming for the inconvenience, court costs and loss of earning for the whole time you are in court. The slackness in their time responding back to you will also go in your favour.
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Potentially being taken to court. What should I do?
- Thread starter armyash
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View the thread, titled "Potentially being taken to court. What should I do?" which is posted in UK Plumbers Forums on UK Plumbers Forums.
I would work as hard as possible between now and then. 8 x your hourly rate should do it
Yes, go to court. In reality that is, prepare for court with a reply letter.
It is a game of bluff usually and both sides wait to see who gives in first.
You need to do a reply letter to their latest letter , just stating very politely a repeat of your side of the story, how you should have been informed instead of being accused of unsubstantiated damage long after your work.
Repeat that your £150 was a goodwill gesture only, without any liability on your part, and now that it has been rejected you now withdraw the offer.
Do mention you believe you have been unfairly treated and ignored.
Do as Shaun said and say you will be claiming for lost earnings and expenses.
It is a game of bluff usually and both sides wait to see who gives in first.
You need to do a reply letter to their latest letter , just stating very politely a repeat of your side of the story, how you should have been informed instead of being accused of unsubstantiated damage long after your work.
Repeat that your £150 was a goodwill gesture only, without any liability on your part, and now that it has been rejected you now withdraw the offer.
Do mention you believe you have been unfairly treated and ignored.
Do as Shaun said and say you will be claiming for lost earnings and expenses.
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I also think it is vital that the time has passed for the £150.00 gesture. I would write your reply and see what they say. Might be worth getting in touch with someone in the law know how, just so you are prepared in the event they follow through with the threat.
Yes, I think best to always retaliate with a very polite but hard response, reversing the points made against Armyash and putting the customer under the same treatment.
The £150 offer was a risky one because it infers admission of some responsibility, so I would repeat it was only a goodwill gesture and generous considering I have only had a couple of photos and apparently a third party report a long period after I had done the work, with total refusal for allowing me any involvement including opportunity of notification or viewing of any allegation.
It's like a game of chicken most times
Excellent advice from everyone once again. I understand the goodwill gesture was risky but it was crystal clear there was no admission of fault.
I will get a letter written up this week and I will post it up on here before I send it.
I feel things are more in my favour, I realise it's possible I can lose if it goes to court but I would rather lose in court, pay whatever they say than roll over now and give them money without a fight.
I will get a letter written up this week and I will post it up on here before I send it.
I feel things are more in my favour, I realise it's possible I can lose if it goes to court but I would rather lose in court, pay whatever they say than roll over now and give them money without a fight.
TBH I don't think it will end up
I hope so but I think she is arrogant enough to see it through.
Hopefully the husband can talk some sense into her
It’s what I hate most about this industry. Engineers to willing to slate each other, rather then stick up for each other. Completely winds me up to my core.
neither do I and to be honest you would have to be really unlucky for the court to not see what has happened here.
It would have been fair enough if Armyash had have done something that was clearly incompetent or cowboy work,
but drilling a newly tiled floor where you were asked to fit a toilet was just an unfortunate incident that a pipe happened to be below the exact spot. (If he actually did cause the leak).
The position of the holes to be drilled in the floor would have been most likely with little, if any, choice of position.
And any pipes should ideally have been not installed below where a toilet could be and to a decent depth.
If I had have been the trade coming to find the leak, I would have told the customer it was an unknown risk to the plumber and therefore not his fault really
Agree mate
They are going to argue that I either was incompetent or didn't check for pipes under the tiles. Not sure how I could have checked that. I will argue that a pan was previously fitted there so I had no reason to expect there to be pipes where I would be drilling.
You’ll do fine mate. Play it exactly as you have here.
thats the thing flip it how would they suggested you check
W
Welder
Hi Ash.
Firstly, your 'gesture' was exactly that. You made it clear there was no liability taken. The law does not see that kind of thing as normal people see it. The law sees that gesture as simply that NO inference whatsoever. That is now concluded.
However, it works in your favour as you have demonstrated you wished to move towards them. She has remained intransigent.
You have also asked for further information, disclosure in legal terms. They have either ignored or refused to supply that information. The court will require it believe me.
If it were me, I would not even acknowledge the requests. Why? To do so puts her in charge, leaves her to drive it and you to respond. Personally, I would resend the letter asking for full disclosure and breakdowns of all costs but now it would be minus the gesture. Perhaps. and I am not certain here so you need to take some advice, you now start talking of your accrued costs.
When she issues the court order, you have the chance to issue a counterclaim. Another alternative is to issue a court order against her before she raises one to you for the harassment. Again advice reqd.
The bad news there though is that as a self employed person, where we all minimise our tax liability and therefore minimise our income, your potential claim will be quite light in terms of hourly rate. You can completely forget £400 a day unless you can prove you are currently paying tax at that same rate.
As already discussed however, and hopefully you've carried out, you'll have kept contemporaneos notes to indicate just what time you have spent defending yourself against this daft accusation and therefore be able to quantify time spent.
The reality of these cases is that often, even if you win, the judge may tell you you have nothing to claim. You will have 'won' in the eyes of the law but it will have cost you to do so. It may well prove more expensive to defend your honour than to roll over.
In order to minimise your costs, I would draw up a summary/timeline of events to take to someone so they can get stuck into it without racking up too many hours at £200 per hour.
Or just meet her in dark alley and graphically explain her future to her 😱 JUST KIDDIN!
PS. What you can do in the meantime is to gather evidence from an independent engineer (e.g. someone who's perhaps a CIPHE member) who will act as an expert witness on your behalf. The cost of this will form part of your counterclaim. I would be asking what custom & practise is (so what normal plumbers do) for the scenario you encountered. Personally I know of no one who would have checked for pipes underfloor. It is not 'reasonable' (legal term for normal) to do so. Even if they say it is one can soon inject an element of farce into what might be a problem. Most of the time you can also through their desire to keep costs down back at them in those circumstances too so you were forced by the insistence to keep costs down to do a minimal job. You get my drift. In court they'll look bloody daft.
Firstly, your 'gesture' was exactly that. You made it clear there was no liability taken. The law does not see that kind of thing as normal people see it. The law sees that gesture as simply that NO inference whatsoever. That is now concluded.
However, it works in your favour as you have demonstrated you wished to move towards them. She has remained intransigent.
You have also asked for further information, disclosure in legal terms. They have either ignored or refused to supply that information. The court will require it believe me.
If it were me, I would not even acknowledge the requests. Why? To do so puts her in charge, leaves her to drive it and you to respond. Personally, I would resend the letter asking for full disclosure and breakdowns of all costs but now it would be minus the gesture. Perhaps. and I am not certain here so you need to take some advice, you now start talking of your accrued costs.
When she issues the court order, you have the chance to issue a counterclaim. Another alternative is to issue a court order against her before she raises one to you for the harassment. Again advice reqd.
The bad news there though is that as a self employed person, where we all minimise our tax liability and therefore minimise our income, your potential claim will be quite light in terms of hourly rate. You can completely forget £400 a day unless you can prove you are currently paying tax at that same rate.
As already discussed however, and hopefully you've carried out, you'll have kept contemporaneos notes to indicate just what time you have spent defending yourself against this daft accusation and therefore be able to quantify time spent.
The reality of these cases is that often, even if you win, the judge may tell you you have nothing to claim. You will have 'won' in the eyes of the law but it will have cost you to do so. It may well prove more expensive to defend your honour than to roll over.
In order to minimise your costs, I would draw up a summary/timeline of events to take to someone so they can get stuck into it without racking up too many hours at £200 per hour.
Or just meet her in dark alley and graphically explain her future to her 😱 JUST KIDDIN!
PS. What you can do in the meantime is to gather evidence from an independent engineer (e.g. someone who's perhaps a CIPHE member) who will act as an expert witness on your behalf. The cost of this will form part of your counterclaim. I would be asking what custom & practise is (so what normal plumbers do) for the scenario you encountered. Personally I know of no one who would have checked for pipes underfloor. It is not 'reasonable' (legal term for normal) to do so. Even if they say it is one can soon inject an element of farce into what might be a problem. Most of the time you can also through their desire to keep costs down back at them in those circumstances too so you were forced by the insistence to keep costs down to do a minimal job. You get my drift. In court they'll look bloody daft.
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As a socialist, and an ethical business, I would like to clarify that my accounting practices reflect my actual income and my actual expenditure accurately so that I will be taxed fairly to pay for essential public services (amongst other things the government spends money on).
No doubt Dave is merely referring to the fact that we all record our expenses and these are subtracted from our income, thus our day rate is not all profit, but I would like to have it on record that willfully misrepresenting profit to be lower than it actually is is not acceptable practice and not something I do myself. This is what some of the less ethical corporations are doing and I do not approve of it.
Same here mate. Everything I earn goes through my books. Wouldn’t have it any other way.
W
Welder
Excuse me! Where the hell did that come from?
No Ric, I am not referring to that at all.
Read what I said, do not read anything INTO what I said based on your own biases.
We all legally minimise our tax liability - that's what we pay accountants for.
Do not try to portrait me as some tax evader cos that will p1ss me right off...
Dave I think it was these four words that caused confusion.
"and minimise our income"
I don’t think he meant for you to take offence mate. He was just saying that not all of us are bothered about our tax liability. I for one earn want I earn and will pay tax on all of it. As we all know not all of us do that. (I think that was his point).
Dave,
I wouldn't dream of portraying you as a tax evader, and I meant to be quite clear on that point in my second paragraph. Obviously I failed, though I'm not quite sure how I could have been any clearer.
All I meant was that your comment could be interpreted more than one way; while you no doubt simply meant that a £400 day rate could not be claimed as loss of earnings because there would also be loss of expenses (as I explained), the line about minimising tax liability could be read in another way too. And the way your line about Ash not being able to prove he is paying tax on £400 a day reads, really did suggest to me that you thought HE was on the fiddle. Clearly an honest self-assessment, with income of £400 a day would declare £400 a day, but would also declare £*** a day in expenses to be deducted from income, making taxable profit much lower.
All I wanted to clarify that I do not approve of or engage in any tax evasion or legal or illegal avoidance techniques (except a small ISA, my mother's suggestion, and a waste of time in any case if you ask me, as it was set up at a time when I was a student and not earning over the tax threshold (and I would feel bad about that, if it actually made any meaningful interest)).
No aspersions on your tax return accuracy were intended or implied!
W
Welder
Bloody hate email...
Sorry people. **** day. What I should have done is asked for clarification before getting out of my pram.
I really do appreciate everyone trying to make me see sense.
My real point was/is. A day rate isn't what we end up earning as an annual rate. The courts will take your HMRC declared annual income (because that is generally the only way you can prove income to them) and divide it by the working days in a year regardless of whether you take any holiday or not.
Have a good evening and apologies again. 🙄
Sorry people. **** day. What I should have done is asked for clarification before getting out of my pram.
I really do appreciate everyone trying to make me see sense.
My real point was/is. A day rate isn't what we end up earning as an annual rate. The courts will take your HMRC declared annual income (because that is generally the only way you can prove income to them) and divide it by the working days in a year regardless of whether you take any holiday or not.
Have a good evening and apologies again. 🙄
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