- Jurisdiction
- Pennsylvania
I run a small industrial machine design and building business, focusing on the mechanical aspects of the equipment. I was contacted about a year ago (through a former co-worker) by a machine controls business who wanted to expand into industrial robotics, a field in which I have experience, and they do not.
They had one particular client that they asked me to help design a solution for (using a robot to palletize boxes coming off their packaging line, pretty standard stuff)). I helped then extensively with this, doing, I believe, the majority of the background and engineering work and handing it off to their salesman.
Over the course of the year, the job expanded to replacing most of their packaging line, and again I did all the planning, layout, and engineering work, and handed it off to their salesman for presentation to the client. My work products were used extensively in this effort and early this year we were awarded the job.
In the meantime, they asked me to assist with the design and mechanical aspects of several other robotic projects that they were trying to get. I was happy to do this as I was repeatedly assured that I would be doing all the mechanical parts of these jobs from this partnership. This amounts to a couple hundred hours of engineering work over the last year.
A few weeks ago we had a planning meeting about this project wherein they announced that they wanted to save money on this project by not testing any of the equipment before installing it on the customer's floor. In this industry, something like this is just not done; you ALWAYS test before you put it in front of the customer especially a project as complex as this. I objected and said they were creating tremendous risk, but they said they could save a lot of money by not testing. So, their customer, their decision… I left it at that.
The following week I was supposed to go with their salesman to one of their existing customers to look at a machine that needed a rebuild. This was mysteriously cancelled, which I didn't think much of at the time.
Fast forward a week, so about a week before the first invoice for my services was due, I received a derogatory text, questioning my integrity concerning the no-testing decision, from their salesman that was intended for one of the partners. The salesman visited my shop the next afternoon ostensibly to apologize, but instead arguing, vigorously, that the text was somehow not derogatory, and was just taken out of context. I asked him to send me the exculpatory context texts and he said absolutely that he would.
The owner of the other company called the next morning demanding to have a meeting and I declined until either he, or his employee, fulfilled the obligation and sent me the context, as I could not speak on even footing without all the relevant facts. He then emailed a threat to cancel the entire relationship unless I called him immediately, to which I replied that I would be happy to meet with him after I (you guessed it) read the context.
Later that afternoon (this was a friday) the owner of the other company and I agreed to meet at my office on Monday to discuss this, (by this point, he would have had time to delete anything damaging, so by then the texts were moot.) but I received an email Sunday morning indicating that they were ending the relationship immediately, citing my (supposed) willingness to walk away from the project over seeing some texts
For a sense of scale, I approximate their overall sale on this job was about $8 or $900,000, of which close to $200,000 was my work, $300,000 was cost of OEM equipment, and $3, to $400,000 was their profit. - My estimate only as I was not privy to their final quotations, but I did specify and price nearly all the equipment going into the project.
So the question is; is there an avenue to recover compensation for my work on this particular project - and/or compensation for all the work done on all their other projects? They have not said so in writing, but they made it clear they have no intention of paying for anything I've done.
Complicating matter:
They subcontracted one small machine rebuild job to me 2 months ago. The job is currently about 90% done. They want the machine back immediately and have indicated (verbally) that they will not pay the remaining 50% owed on the rebuild (about $3,500).
Their first payment went over 30 days past due, and it was not until I mentioned that their job was on credit hold pending payment that they finally sent the down payment. This is the only billing history I have with them.
Can I insist on COD payment for the machine? If there is no promising legal recourse, can I bill them for any of my professional services on the the robot projects I did for them?
They had one particular client that they asked me to help design a solution for (using a robot to palletize boxes coming off their packaging line, pretty standard stuff)). I helped then extensively with this, doing, I believe, the majority of the background and engineering work and handing it off to their salesman.
Over the course of the year, the job expanded to replacing most of their packaging line, and again I did all the planning, layout, and engineering work, and handed it off to their salesman for presentation to the client. My work products were used extensively in this effort and early this year we were awarded the job.
In the meantime, they asked me to assist with the design and mechanical aspects of several other robotic projects that they were trying to get. I was happy to do this as I was repeatedly assured that I would be doing all the mechanical parts of these jobs from this partnership. This amounts to a couple hundred hours of engineering work over the last year.
A few weeks ago we had a planning meeting about this project wherein they announced that they wanted to save money on this project by not testing any of the equipment before installing it on the customer's floor. In this industry, something like this is just not done; you ALWAYS test before you put it in front of the customer especially a project as complex as this. I objected and said they were creating tremendous risk, but they said they could save a lot of money by not testing. So, their customer, their decision… I left it at that.
The following week I was supposed to go with their salesman to one of their existing customers to look at a machine that needed a rebuild. This was mysteriously cancelled, which I didn't think much of at the time.
Fast forward a week, so about a week before the first invoice for my services was due, I received a derogatory text, questioning my integrity concerning the no-testing decision, from their salesman that was intended for one of the partners. The salesman visited my shop the next afternoon ostensibly to apologize, but instead arguing, vigorously, that the text was somehow not derogatory, and was just taken out of context. I asked him to send me the exculpatory context texts and he said absolutely that he would.
The owner of the other company called the next morning demanding to have a meeting and I declined until either he, or his employee, fulfilled the obligation and sent me the context, as I could not speak on even footing without all the relevant facts. He then emailed a threat to cancel the entire relationship unless I called him immediately, to which I replied that I would be happy to meet with him after I (you guessed it) read the context.
Later that afternoon (this was a friday) the owner of the other company and I agreed to meet at my office on Monday to discuss this, (by this point, he would have had time to delete anything damaging, so by then the texts were moot.) but I received an email Sunday morning indicating that they were ending the relationship immediately, citing my (supposed) willingness to walk away from the project over seeing some texts
For a sense of scale, I approximate their overall sale on this job was about $8 or $900,000, of which close to $200,000 was my work, $300,000 was cost of OEM equipment, and $3, to $400,000 was their profit. - My estimate only as I was not privy to their final quotations, but I did specify and price nearly all the equipment going into the project.
So the question is; is there an avenue to recover compensation for my work on this particular project - and/or compensation for all the work done on all their other projects? They have not said so in writing, but they made it clear they have no intention of paying for anything I've done.
Complicating matter:
They subcontracted one small machine rebuild job to me 2 months ago. The job is currently about 90% done. They want the machine back immediately and have indicated (verbally) that they will not pay the remaining 50% owed on the rebuild (about $3,500).
Their first payment went over 30 days past due, and it was not until I mentioned that their job was on credit hold pending payment that they finally sent the down payment. This is the only billing history I have with them.
Can I insist on COD payment for the machine? If there is no promising legal recourse, can I bill them for any of my professional services on the the robot projects I did for them?
