Money owed for work

rupee99

MothballsWallet wrote: »

Here's an excerpt from the email he sent me on Thursday night:

My friend has told me that he does not have the funds from the company's trading as Mr X suggests. Mr X also mentions that a court order to pay the 2,200 he owes me would cause the company to go into liquidation.

I'm not sure how he can ask me for receipts now when he never did before, but there you go.

Anyway, I have followed the advice from rupee99 and DVardysShadow, so hopefully that will scare him further, but I'm concerned that he'll just keep asking questions about the receipts, which I don't know if I can answer.

It would seem to me that there is just obfuscation and dissembling on the part of Mr X and those connected with him. If it really was a case of can't pay rather than won't pay he should have been frank with you not raise spurious queries months after the monies were due.

This person is obviously trying to avoid their liabilities and, probably, looks on you as a weak opponent and therefore easy to not pay compared to, say, HMRC or the utility companies.

Your chances of success on this route are far from certain, but for the court fee (which I believe is £30), it is better than the,IMO, nil chance of you getting anything by negotiation.

rupee99

It occurs to me that you will need the Registered Office address of Mr X's company to issue the proceedings. If you do not have it, or want to check it, you can do so on the Companies House website on the webcheck service.

http://wck2.companieshouse.gov.uk/a4da7d7c7a23270ebb28099a2867e900/wcframe?name=accessCompanyInfo

MothballsWallet

When I issued the LBA, I sent it to his home address, will I have to issue the summons to his business one?''Actually that might work better as issuing against the company would cause any hearing to be held at a County Court closer to me.

rupee99

All proceedings must be issued to the Registered Office, it is usually the business premises but is often the company's accountant, lawyer or similar.

MothballsWallet

The problem with the company is that it's a Limited company, and therefore limited liability. Also, although my friend and I believe that there should still be about 18k in the company, Mr X claims that most of this went on company expenses such as office rental, even though I don't believe he ever did any business out of an office, just his home. Also, I don't think he has a company lawyer or accountant.

Okay, so I've got together the following for the claim:

• Dates of starting and finishing
• Emails regarding the job description and negotiations of the rate with Mr X
• Invoices
• LBA and final invoice
• Mr X's goodwill gesture email and my responses
• His other correspondence in relation to my responses to his goodwill gesture

I'll be filing the claim tomorrow evening, so hopefully have everything I need already in place.

rupee99

MothballsWallet wrote: »

The problem with the company is that it's a Limited company, and therefore limited liability. Also, although my friend and I believe that there should still be about 18k in the company, Mr X claims that most of this went on company expenses such as office rental, even though I don't believe he ever did any business out of an office, just his home. Also, I don't think he has a company lawyer or accountant.

Okay, so I've got together the following for the claim:

• Dates of starting and finishing
• Emails regarding the job description and negotiations of the rate with Mr X
• Invoices
• LBA and final invoice
• Mr X's goodwill gesture email and my responses
• His other correspondence in relation to my responses to his goodwill gesture

I'll be filing the claim tomorrow evening, so hopefully have everything I need already in place.

You could call his bluff and issue a Statutory Demand under the Insolvency Act threatening to issue a winding-up petition if he does not pay your debt within 21 days. The forms are on line but you will need to get a process server to deliver it for you.

The trouble with such action is that if he calls your bluff it can be expensive to issue the petition and is rarely a timely or effective method of debt collection.

MothballsWallet

rupee99: I understand what you mean by him calling my bluff, so I think I'll stick to the small claims route.

Also, he does own 3 companies in all, is it enough to put the claim against one of them, or do I need to list all 3?

MothballsWallet

Just had this from Mr X, and I've filed my claim through Money Claim Online:

Without prejudice.

What you have to remember is that you were working directly for {my friend} - not for me - and {my friend} was the only person in control of the income from all the surveys performed and he promised faithfully that he would keep the income flowing in. Unfortunately this has not happened and as a result the income dried up for {the company} in November early December - however {my friend} did that he would take over all the income and invoicing from that date and he would sort out any debts and that in 2010 we would build up the income for {the company} again.

What you have invoiced us also made no allowance for the reduction in business and amount of admin as we got less busy.

You must go to him for on going payments as {the company} has no income at the moment - only that which {my friend} is achieving.

If you claim against {the company} it will be defended and I will counterclaim as you and {my friend} have not done a satisfactory job in bringing in work and payments and as you do not have a contract with us and only can invoice for expenses you will recieve nothing - better to accept what is on offer with the prospect of further payments as {the company} revives than nothing at all.

As you have not answered my quiestions regarding provision of proof of expenses for the sums of money that have been paid to you not covered by receipts I must now ask you to return those payment as we must have proof of expenditure.

Alternatively if these payments are seen as income and not expenses then we will have to declare to the Inland Revenue that they were in fact payments for services - ie fees - subject to tax and declaration etc.

As soon as I received any demand through a court I will issue a counterclaim and it will not be amicable any more.

Now I'm rather scared as I've already used what he paid me before towards my debts. But the agreement was not between my friend and I about the money, it was between Mr X and myself.

Even if I accepted his existing offer, there's no real guarantee that he'd pay the rest of the money - I suppose he's really trying to scare me into dropping the claim, and losing the 80 quid I've already spent on it.

rupee99

The man does not appear to know a lot about legal processes or the law, there is absolutely no reason for the above letter to be without prejudice, in fact if it is verbatim I cannot see much reason for the letter at all.

It is simply bluster. It is not relevant that the business dropped or that you were undertaking duties to your friend, because he was representing the company to whom you were contracted.

The threat about reporting your income to the "Inland Revenue" (sic) is as empty as it is as damaging to himself.

However having said all of that I suspect he has organised his affairs so that the company that owes you money probably doesn't have any. He will probably not defend the action and just allow you to do whatever you can against the company, which if I am correct and it does not have any money or assets, is not vey much.

Sorry

MothballsWallet

That letter is verbatim as he wrote it, apart from me removing the salutation, closing line and altering references to the name of the company and my friend to protect their identities.

Would I appear weak if I cancelled the claim, said goodbye to the 80 quid court fee, swallowed my pride and accepted Mr X's offer, especially as he's threatening to want the 600 quid he's paid me so far back? The 500 quid's not that bad, really, and it'd be tangible, although the rest would be at a "later" date, which I still can't pin him down on, which is why I originally went ahead with the court claim.

Because I'm quite nervous about proceeding, but I feel that was his exact intention: to scare me into not going to court.