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When the contract goes south . . .

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by longarrow

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To make a long story short, I (First Party) took a contract through a consultancy (Second Party), to be contracted to another consultancies (Third Party) client (Fourth Party - Involving two projects). After many hours of analysis, a template was provided (by Third Party) to be used as the System Test Script repository. Part way into the document, I was also assigned (by Third Party) to go out on a new client site to do an initial assessment. Once completed, I felt a need to clean up the local drive and USB drive files used for all projects. Up to this point in time I have used two additional back-up repositories of my own to audit my work. Well you may have guessed, I deleted one sub-directory that contained my current version of the test scripts.

After returning home, continuing to work on the required assessment document, the drive containing the deleted directory had overwritten the sectors, thus, I was hosed.

The Third Party Manager was provided (by me) a solution to mitigate the lost document (without my billing him) and provide the document, presented up to date within three days. He declined. I learned later that he retracted the bill to the Fourth Party (11,000 - US), and refused to pay for any subsequent invoices submitted by me.

I'm out 3600 dollars for my time already worked.

The Second Party refuses to push the issue with the Third Party, because they have other accounts in other states they want to maintain.

I have no recource here except file a suit against two consultant companies.

I don't know if it is worth it.

2 replies

by hal 9000

No it's not worth the Time & Effort wasted attempting to get the money. You'll need to look at the court costs and what your legal costs will be then the amount of time that you'll need to take off work to finish this off. That will never be close so multiply by at least a factor of 20 and you'll start to be getting close to the amount of wasted time that you'll also be out of pocket for and then the Legal People will want you there when they tell you to be where ever and charge you like a wounded bull for everything that they do.

The sad fact of life here is that pursuing an amount like this will end up physically costing you more that you actually recover in Legal costs and then you'll need to consider the wasted time that generally comes as you have other work that needs to be finished yesterday but instead of doing this you are sitting ideally outside a court waiting for the other party to show up which they don't do so the case is adjourned for another mention latter.

While the money seems like a lot now the amount that you waste chasing it will be much greater and you'll also loose business latter on while you are chasing the money. The simple fact here is that the person in question knows that it's not worth while for you to chase them over this amount of money so they have the attitude of Stuff It and to Hell with you.

Personally if one company is unwilling to do their own dirty work to maintain their contractors you shouldn't be working for them in the first place. But accepting work from one of the other parties directly involved in the original contract really is a recipe for disaster.

Col

by wayne m.

It's a hard fact of the consulting life, but one is paid for deliverables. Working 80-100 hours and deleting the result is the same as not having done any work in the client's eye.

Some recommendations for the future. Look at maintaining some sort of configuration management approach (i.e., back ups) for all future work. There are lots of ways for computer-based data to disappear - be prepared to recover it on a brand new machine. Also, whenever shifting tasks, make a deliverable to your client - make it their responsibility to hang onto the data while you do something else.

Given the amounts involved, I do not think it is worthwhile pursuing legal action. Given the facts presented, I am doubtful you could win in any case. The best approach I could recommend would be to have a discussion with the Third Party manager, admit your mistake, and ask how the two of you can continuing working together. If the relationship is irreparably damaged, ask the Second Party manager to reassign you.

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