Sewn into the suit

The judge is sometimes accused of using language that is too difficult and formal. However, that cannot be said of the judge in this case.

What was going on. The client had a roof structure with a roof terrace built. According to the contract, he had agreed on a contract price of EUR 15,000 including VAT. Subsequently, the parties quarreled about the additional work, among other things. The parties found themselves in court two years after completion.

There, the principal suddenly claimed back a little more than 12,000 euros in what he considered to be overpayments of installments. What was going on, according to him: apart from having paid the instalments in cash, he had also paid each instalment in cash as an advance payment. However, that advance payment had never been settled. So in total he had paid much more than the contract sum.

The contractor acknowledged those cash payments. But, and you can feel it coming, that was part of the agreement that the client would pay the other half of the (actual) contract sum in cash but without the VAT. Whatever we think of this state of affairs, the contractor obviously had a problem at the time. Logically, that agreement had not been put on paper and so it was his word against the client's.

However, the judge found it unlikely that the principal, who had his affairs in good order during the trial, would have discovered only after two years that he had paid the contract sum twice. In short, the judge believed nothing of this advance payment story by the client.

That the judge was little enamored with this principal is evident from the remainder of the ruling. The judge found that the principal had tried to "screw the contractor in the suit" and therefore rejected the principal's claim.

What the contractor and client did was obviously not allowed. The client then tried to take advantage of this. However, this judge went too far. He did not need difficult or formal language to express it.