Well it was also interesting in its own way.
We arrived in court, and before the case was heard we had a short discussion with the paralegal who told us (again) all that was going to happen was that a date would be set for the hearing and that we’d probably win that as well because we had such a strong case.
In we go to the court… and we’re all taken by surprise by the magistrate telling us a professional mediator was available and we all had to go discuss the issues with him and reach a mutually agreed decision (!!!)
Off we go to the ‘mediation room’ where we had the opportunity to ‘discuss the issues’… hmmm… anyway Garry tells us how he considers we owe him money… and I give him several serves about the appalling standard of his workmanship and lack of professionalism etc etc…
… and then we break for us to have a discussion with the paralegal who *then* decides to tell us we ought o settle because the magistrate will do it for us and just award him difference between what we say we owe him, and what he says we owe him.
We are now stuck between a rock and a hard place so in the end we go back and after some discussion we ‘agree’ at a sum of $7,250. This is a lot more than we think we owed him… **but** is actually *$750* less than we offered him two court appearences ago.
The upshot is that though we ended up paying him…
(a) we achieved our main purpose in first causing him as much stress and aggravation as we possibly could before being forced to pay because of his behaviour over the entire course of the work he was supposed to have done.
(b) he has now gone away with a sour feeling because his greed resulted in him actually getting a lower figure than he would have got had he accepted our offer made a few months ago.
All in all it could have been worse… though of course we still have to pay the solicitors so will probably end up ‘even’ with the figure he originally sued us for… but since *he* didn;t get it we’re quite satisfied 🙂
Strangely enough it seems that whilst we can;t sue him directly for any of the work he’s done badly, we *can* approach his insurance company and tell *them* they have to have the work repaired… this is an approach we are yet to think over. Pretty much we’re over it now and might just get on with it ourselves.
The Eclectic Interweb 