Tribunal

[bixy]

I wonder if anyone else has experience of being taken to the tribunal. We had work carried out on our house and have refused to pay the full bill due to some of the work not being carried out correctly. The company responsible do not want to seem to discuss at all. They want all the money and that's it. It is a tremendous worry to us and in some ways we are tempted to just pay up and try to forget it. We worry that by going to the tribunal we will inevitably be involved in further expense. If anyone has had experience of being taken to the tribunal or any other advice I would be most grateful.

Patrick

[nomoss]

No experience of the tribunal here, although I attended one in Algeria in 1967, where the system was (then) very similar, when a man who allegedly burgled our house was tried. There was a lot of shouting between the avocats, which I found very difficult to follow. I would never attend one again, even as a witness, without a legal advisor.

If you have not yet received written advice from the company you might still be able to obtain Assurance Juridique to cover your costs, although this may not cover events pre-dating the policy.

We have cover up to 20,000€, covering costs over a minimum of 150€, through a Pleins Droits policy through our bank (Crédit Agricole), at a cost of 57.20€ TTC per year.

[Ron Avery]

Friends took a company to a tribunal in France last year so perhaps this experience may be more current and relevant. They had very shoddy work done, but were advised to pay the full amount which they did and contest it through arbitration.

Before the case was heard a court official visited the property to assess the claim and sent a report siggesting to rectify what was an almighty bodge up it would cost 300€.  So they got an independant archirect to assess the work and his conclusion was that the work should be redone completely with an estimted cost of 30,000€

By the time it went to court, after waiting a year, with translation fees (they did not speak good enough French to understand all the court documents so they hired an English speaking lawyer) and then had to pay for an Advocate for the court appearance, they had racked up a bill of 8,000€ in fees alone.  When it went to court the court found for them and awarded them 300€ based on the court bailiff's report, ignoring the architect's report completely, with each side to pay its own costs.

A lot depends on how good your case is but you will certainly spend a lot of money before its resolved and without necessarily saving a centime at the end of the day.  So if you are arguing the toss over a small amount it may cost you a small fortune to prove that you were right.

[Benjamin]

Very sound advice Ron.

When I was younger I'd have put any energy and money into proving that I was right but with age comes a certain feeling that the end result has to be worth the effort put in.

[Val_2]

I am in the other camp at the moment by taking a client to court for non-payment and it has gone as follows. We started proceedings with our advocat who after sending the usual official AR letter demanding full payment to the client then lodged it with the local Tribunal de Commerce. I attended and registered my prescence and the judge one week later wrote to our adv to say our clients were to pay 1500€ and not us to have an independent expert visit their property and make a detailed report. We had to attend along with our adv and the client and her adv(who turned up over and hour late and never said one word) and the whole thing took nearly five hours of discussing estimates,factures and finally an inspection of the work completed. Our client was discovered to have claimed for work that was carried out by other artisans and some of it fifteen years ago so the expert soon got the measure of her when she started to take over the affair and he told her off. He then finished saying there were no problems on our part but his report could take upto four months before it goes before the judge again for the final decree regarding payment and interest on our part for our expenses. What I am trying to say to you is that unless it is for thousands of euros as in our case, you will end up paying and have your name blackened as we have found out from other artisans who worked there before us. Don't forget also that the artisan will have his insurers insist on their independent assessor visit your site also for their report as they will be paying his legal side.

[bixy]

Thanks for those replies. Not very encouraging, but rather as I suspected. Unfortunately the contract which we signed  is written very much to the advantage of the company concerned, and since it is almost impossible to provide proof that the work was not carried out correctly [we have only the proof of our own eyes as it was carried out] we may well be on a loser. The moral may be: go over the contract with a fine tooth comb and if you are promised anything verbally make sure it is written into the contract..

Patrick