Contra Charges!!!!

[luke green]

This might be the wrong forum for this, but thought i would ask just in case somebody may know.
Long and short of it, is the following legal??

A builder has sent to us (& all over trades) a contra charge to pay. This was for a damage to an internal door + other small bit's. The Plumber, the roofer, the window guy all have to pay an amount as nobody admitted the damage.
The builder has also said that this will be happening on all sites moving forward for any scenario like this. Now we work on multiple site for this national builder so potentially we could be receiving charges every week!
This whole thing does not seam right to me, surly it cant be legal???

 

[flyingron]

What state are you in? This sounds very British to me. We only deal with US law here.

 

[zddoodah]

A builder has sent to us (& all over trades) a contra charge to pay.

Please define "contra charge." Sounds like you're talking about a deductive change order Also, I assume "us" refers to you, "[t]he [p]lumber, the roofer [and] the window guy." Correct?

This whole thing does not seam right to me, surly it cant be legal?

This is entirely a matter of what your subcontract says. Obviously, no one here has read your subcontract, and you didn't identify the state where this happened, so it's impossible to opine intelligently about the legality. However, you mentioned that this is a "national builder," so I assume it's a large general contractor that requires its subcontractors to sign very one-sided subcontracts. If that's right, it's entirely possible that the subcontract has a provision that says the GC can allocate charges for damages to one or more subs, as the GC sees fit, if it cannot figure out which specific sub caused the damage.

Obviously, you're free to reject the "contra charge" and see if things can be worked out. As always, however, the big GC's leverage is that it might not hire you on future projects if you make noise.

 

[adjusterjack]

This sounds very British to me

Yep. Poster's IP address is in the United Kingdom.

This whole thing does not seam right to me, surly it cant be legal???

You should be discussing that with your solicitor.