P'ninat Mishpat: Amounts and Conditions of Payment to an Architect – part III | Beit Din Eretz Hemda - Gazit | Beit Midrash

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Case: The plaintiff (=pl), an architect, worked on two projects for the defendant (=def). Regarding each, they dispute the amount due and/or the payment’s timing. In the second project (=pro 2), pl submitted an estimate of 142,000 NIS, which def initially indicated he wished to negotiate. Def also convinced pl to agree to be patient with payment due to def’s cash flow difficulties. According to pl, this was only until the buyers in the first project would make their last payments (which has already occurred). According to def, it was until final payments by the buyers of pro 2, which is expected to be in five years. After non-payment, pl stopped working. The two also disagree what percentage of the work pl did on pro 2 and whether pl is responsible for damage to def for stopping to work at a critical time in the project.

Ruling: Under interrogation, def admitted that while he expressed dissatisfaction with the estimate, he never got pl to agree to a lower price. On the one hand, when there is no valid agreement on a worker’s wages, we obligate only the low end of the range of wages (Rama, Choshen Mishpat 332:4). However, since def knew what pl was demanding, and he told pl to proceed with the work, we apply the following halacha. If two sides to a sale demanded different prices and the negotiations ceased without conclusion, and the sale happened anyway, we treat it as if the one who initiated going forward eventually agreed with the other side (Shulchan Aruch, CM 221:1).

The above applies to the 142,000 NIS in wages, about which pl claims that he never waivered, not the schedule of payment, that was more clearly not finalized. Although def claimed that he would not have agreed to the fee if he would not get his way regarding the payment schedule, there is no evidence that the two were made contingent one on the other. While pl cannot demand immediate payment, the demand to wait five years is not a normal one. We therefore rule that def should pay, starting from the time of the ruling, in six equal monthly payments.

Pl claims that he did half of the work, whereas def said that he did only a small minority of the work. Beit din’s expert estimated the work at 35% of the full job. The expert claimed that based on standard arrangements, the fact that he did the work from the beginning should make him deserve an additional 10% of what was done. However, beit din did not request of the expert to recommend systems of compensation but only to estimate the percentage of the work done; beit din uses its own factors in determining how much is due. Beit din decides that for the work on pro 2, pl is to receive 142,000 NIS * 35%.

We will not reduce what is due to pl for leaving def in the lurch when he stopped working in the middle of the project. Def had not paid anything on pro 2 at the time and was not willing to do so for quite a long time. Beit din ended up ruling that this was not reasonable and pl had every right to stop working. On the other hand, since def’s stance was reasonable (even though mainly wrong), we will not penalize him for paying late.