Is suing a service provider in Ireland ever worth it?

Capra

Anytime I hear of a dispute in Ireland and people suggest going legal and going through the courts, it's invariably met with "its not worth the hassle and you won't get anything anyway even if you are right. Only the legal people will benefit".

Is it really that hopeless? I've recently been "done" by an architect on house plans. He made lots of mistake, caused us to incur extra structural redesign costs from the engineer, led us on that he would be available at all times of the build phase and massively overcharged us for the pleasure of it all. We started our build last week and immediately realised his errors have caused the plans to have to be quite heavily reworked. The handful of "architect" designed elements of the house will now have to be sacrificed and we will end up with a very nice but more basic design having paid for "architect" design. And to make matters worse he is a close family friend and we have now seen a real nasty side to him. The builders are having a real hard time following his drawings as they are too detailed and have kitchen units and all this other crap on them when we just want some drawings with construction basics on them. He has now removed himself from all whatsapp groups we were in together for even daring to raise these issues with him and said he will no longer provide any advice or services to us and we have just thrown away thousands of euros of free advice he was going to give us. He went from friendly and responsive to complete breakdown in relations in the space of a 3 minute phone call and 2 WhatsApp messages.

We have paid him a lot of money already, more than I think any other architect would have charged us. He says because he was only signed up to tender that he won't get involved in the construction phase even though he told us all along he would. I feel like he took advantage of us being a bit naive and thinking he really wanted to help us. I was hoping we could give him some exposure for his designs and we would get a cool house. There are clear things he said he would do that he hasn't and these are all documented so I feel we should have a very strong case. He's also cleary screwed up multiple times. Again almost all of this is on WhatsApp messages and emails.

We actually had more humble plans drawn up by another designer that we were happy with and he talked us around to getting him to do it. We are out of pocket by about €10k just for these designs and the screw up with the engineer and we can't even use most of what he gave us now. After the dispute with the engineer he refused to communicate directly with the engineer anymore and I believe this is where the main screw up happened as he never pointed out the measurements the engineer was working off were incorrect. He just flat out refused to respond to the engineers email queries directly.

And a lot of what he gave us was totally ott drawings of kitchen plans and itemised purchase lists with ridiculously expensive things like door handles. A kitchen designer would have done all of that for free as part of their service. They are useless from a building point of view. He must have known this stuff wouldn't be of benefit to us. Half of me just wants to put it behind me as a learning experience about someone I thought was a fairly good friend and the other part of me wants blood. Would we ever get any satisfaction going through the courts? The personal betrayal hurts more than the money really. He even has the nerve to try and blame me for these errors. He's taking no responsibility for any of it and has basically told us to take a hike and that its literally all my fault even though I basically had no role in it. Just an absolute dirt bag of the highest order. He's been so malicious since I raised these issues i can't actually get over it. He genuinely has made no attempt at trying to resolve the issues or make us feel like we are getting some value for what we paid for. He actually seems to be enjoying the thought of us ending up with nothing having paid all that money to him. My engineer friends were shocked at what he charged us for these plans.

Caranica

An architect is not a service provider, they are a professional. There are legal distinctions between the two.

You can absolutely sue this person, but it may be throwing good money after bad.

Are they a sole trader or do they work for a company? If company you might get some result from going over their head. Also consider contacting their professional organisation.

Talk to your solicitor, they will be able to give you advice, can't give legal advice on this forum.

AnRothar

Before you go off sueing someone read the contract that you both signed regarding the exact service to be provided.

NUTLEY BOY

In addition to the above it should be remembered that architects usually carry professional indemnity insurance which would deal with this type of issue. I have seen some real gems from architects in terms of negligence so do not be afraid to go after them if you have a stateable case.

I would gather together all my papers including the original contract as well as a detailed summary of all that happened and get a preliminary opinion from a solicitor. If it is complex you may have to take an opinion from counsel. Before that you / your solicitor will probably need to get technical architectural and or engineering advice before opining on the likely prospects of your case. That would be money well spent in contemplation of litigation.

Look at your contract with the architect to see if it contains an arbitration [ouster] clause. That obliges the parties to the contract to submit the dispute to arbitration - not a bad option but definitely not a softer one.

If engaging a solicitor get them to give you a written summary of the likely work involved. You should also ask them for an estimate of the likely costs involved. Additionally, you should ask about the issue of costs generally in the context of litigation / arbitration.

CreadanLady

if he is in the RIAI, then a cute way of taking him down a notch or two would be to draw him out a bit more. Continue the dispute with him, but don't do anythign untoward yourself. Just lure him into saying something very unprofessional on text. Then lodge a complaint into the RIAI on the basis of unprofessional behaviour. Sure, this won't yeild anything for you money wise, but it'll tie him up in RIAI disciplinary investigations for months and permanently blemish his professional record.

Capra

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118879610#Comment_118879610

Well, he asked me if i was on drugs when I queried him and said rants are normally saved for the builders on site. He's said plenty of unprofessional things I think.

Dr Turk Turkelton

I've been the builder for a good few one off builds and my typical advice to the client is to get a well known architect from the area to design the build to get them planning permission.

After that dump then straight away and get a structural engineer to design all the structural stuff and sign off on the build using the plans the architect has half heartedly drawn up and sign off everything.

Those leeches who masquerade as professionals will just charge you the structural engineers fees on top of their own inflated price to get the engineer to sign the same documents.

My 2 cents worth for anyone reading this.