Defending a money claim in county court

[Guest]

I will shortly be defending a claim against me for what the claimant *claims is poor workmanship (floor tiling) I intend to defend the claim on the basis that the pre prepared sub floor was not suitable (wooden floor), I made this clear to the claimant on initial consultation and in a prepared estimate, the claimant refused to give an email address to send the estimate to and claims not to have been given the hard copy of the estimate. The floor moved/ flexed during installation and the result was raised corners of tiles. What are the chances of me successfully defending the claim and is there any way I can look at previous similar cases?

[R0b]

So there was no way of text messaging the claimant that the floor wasn't suitable, you couldn't send the invoice recorded delivery, or you couldn't hand deliver it and provide some kind of video evidence at the time of deliver i.e. video record yourself or you couldn't simply get the claimant to sign the invoice to confirm he/she accepted the risk?

You could have refused the job unless the claimant acknowledged and accepted the risks of the floor not being suitable so I think saying that the claimant refused to provide an email address might not be a good enough excuse.

County Court cases are not reported on generally so you won't find anything similar there and to be honest, this sounds like a he said she said situation and it will be up to judge to ascertain based on the evidence and credibility of each party as to who is telling the truth.

You need to put in place more robust procedures if you want to avoid liabilities like this. There's also the possibility that you've been suckered in the claimant knowing the floor isn't suitable but you went ahead and did the job anyway, accepting the risk of blowback from the claimant.