Good points. I wish you had replied before I sent it to the court. Although there is not much to change.

The initial arrangement was that he would pay for the licensing and I would do web design. He paid only for the class but not for the licensing and then tried to get $199 back when I said that I would need to be compensated for the web services rendered. There was no agreement as to what would happen if there were ethical improprieties and if the agreement was broken by either side.

A deliverable is very iffy; if you do not pay your phone bill, your phone dies, while if you give someone access to your FTP and say “I like the site, publish it” that’s a pretty good indicator that authorization was given, the intent was clear. You can view the site as an ongoing service; he never paid for the rights to the actual site, while when my authorization ended is not at all clear since he did not change the passwords, a logical step if you know you are no longer working with someone.

There were no contracts at all, and the meeting of the minds was not concrete (but a good point), I have one month worth of emails proving that the services were provided; while he billed for $199 initially, AFTER the site went down in response to my billing him and then inflated it to $2000 which is ridiculous( put up a site and see how many people come to it if you spend $0 marketing it, in the first 3 weeks).

I sent all of my correspondence with him to the court with my counter claim. I don’t care if the court does not decide in the favor of the counter claim, I just want it to be equally settled, I want them to realize what this guy is doing, he inflated the bill out of spite, there were no damages( his whole company is not worth $2000). Going rate for web design and upkeep is about $80/h depending on what company you go with, I billed him $50/h.

It’s ugly. I really didn’t want it to come to that, but the issue that broke the deal was a black and white legal issue. He instructed me to break the law and I told him to find a new agent.