Disputes Tribunal<\/a>, claiming he should receive the full payment for the 30 hours\u2019 work he did. She counter-claimed for $1999, alleging he breached the Fair Trading Act.<\/p>\nAn \u2018overly optimistic\u2019 view of the client-designer relationship<\/p>\n
The issue the tribunal needed to address, outlined in a recently released ruling, was whether the pair had entered into a verbal contract. <\/p>\n
The pair, whose names are redacted, met at an open home in September 2022 and the woman told the designer she was considering building a home.<\/p>\n
They chatted and the designer offered to keep in touch with her. <\/p>\n
In early 2023, the woman invited the designer to have a look at the property she was intending to build on, which he did. The woman also emailed him a copy of the site survey plan.<\/p>\n
The designer told the tribunal he understood the woman was in \u201cno hurry to build\u201d. <\/p>\n
The designer said when he offered to do some \u201cworking drawings\u201d, she responded that \u201cmaybe they could talk in a month\u201d.<\/p>\n
He emphasised she said she would \u201ctalk to [him] re working drawings\u201d, and suggested this showed a commitment to wanting to work with him.<\/p>\n
However, adjudicator Sarah Simmonds found the \u201coverall tenor\u201d of the woman\u2019s response was to deflect his suggestion that he do the work. <\/p>\n
The woman described feeling he was \u201call over her like a rash\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cI certainly agree that [the designer] seemed very determined to be involved and I find that [the woman] was trying to gently rebuff him, by her responses,\u201d Simmonds said.<\/p>\n
In March, the parties met, together with the woman\u2019s new partner and a builder friend of hers. The builder had done some concept drawings of a possible new house.<\/p>\n
The designer described it as a \u201chandover meeting\u201d, where the project was being handed over to him to take on.<\/p>\n
However, Simmonds noted the designer wanted it rescheduled because he was sick, but the woman was happy to go ahead with or without him. <\/p>\n
She in \u201cno way considered [his] attendance at that meeting to be important\u201d.<\/p>\n
After the meeting, the designer emailed a fee proposal, but the woman didn\u2019t respond.<\/p>\n
About an hour later, he rang, and the woman said it looked great.<\/p>\n
However, he accepted that at no time did she say anything to the effect that she was authorising him to start work.<\/p>\n
However, at the end of that day\u2019s meeting, he said she told him all she needed was his fee proposal, and he\u2019d taken that to mean she was happy for him to do the work.<\/p>\n
Simmonds disagreed with his reasoning.<\/p>\n
He said the woman had been out when the designer rang, and only had a quick glance at the proposal.<\/p>\n
\u201cAny reasonable person would want more than 45 minutes to decide whether to enter a $13,800 contract,\u201d Simmonds said. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf [the woman] wanted to engage [the designer] based on how she generally speaks, it is more likely than not that she would have expressly said so.\u201d<\/p>\n
The designer had a \u201cvery persistent tone from [the designer] and a very non-committal one from [the woman]\u201d.<\/p>\n
Simmonds said the designer had interpreted events as evidence of a client-designer relationship, but this was perhaps because he set the woman up as a client after they first met, which was an \u201coverly optimistic interpretation of the situation\u201d.<\/p>\n
The $3450 invoice related to about 30 hours\u2019 work \u2013 \u201cthere were contour drawings done which considered the setbacks, and research about cladding types\u201d. <\/p>\n
However, there had been no formal contract entered into, nor a \u201cquasi-contract\u201d as the woman had not received anything from the work, nor encouraged him to do the work, and she\u2019d never intended to enter a legally binding relationship.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe met [the designer] as a real estate agent<\/a> and she believed they had a shared interest in passive house ideas. She thought their communications were as people with a common interest, not client and designer.\u201d<\/p>\nThe designer\u2019s claim was dismissed, but the woman didn\u2019t succeed in her counter-claim either.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlthough I have found that [the designer] was overly optimistic about the nature of the dealings with [the woman] and persistent with his emailing and texting, it is well below the nature and frequency that would be needed to render its conduct unconscionable,\u201d Simmonds said.<\/p>\n
\u201c[The designer] was excited by the prospect of assisting [the woman] and actively looking for work. But as soon as [the woman] directed him to stop, he did.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hannah Bartlett is a Tauranga-based Open Justice reporter at NZME. She previously covered court and local government for the Nelson Mail, and before that was a radio reporter at Newstalk ZB.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"But, she was caught by surprise when an invoice for $3450 arrived. The designer took the woman to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":139082,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[21042,442,498,499,500,501,28145,6846,156,94692,111,139,69,1523,1120,61,6847,2743,1354],"class_list":["post-139081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-architectural","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-designer","tag-disputes","tag-entertainment","tag-invoice","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-over","tag-takes","tag-to","tag-tribunal","tag-unpaid","tag-woman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139081\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}