Your company hired a local landscaping company to add some landscaping and plants to the area around your company’s building. You signed a contract and made a down payment of half of the total cost.
Unfortunately, the landscaper hasn’t kept up their end of the bargain in some way. Your attempts to resolve the problem informally haven’t gotten you any closer to a resolution. What are your options?
Your contract gives you the first clue
When a company fails to satisfy every item in the contract, they have breached the contract. Breaches can happen in the following ways:
- The company does not complete any of the work
- The work is not completed on time (and that causes a problem for you)
- The company has not performed in agreement with the contract’s terms (such as using the wrong materials, plants or leaving work unfinished)
Your contract may specifically lay out the steps you need to take to resolve this conflict with your landscapers, such as written notice or an arbitration agreement, so that’s the first thing that you may want to do.
If you end up taking the issue to court, you may ask for a number of potential solutions:
- You could ask the court to have the contract voided and your money refunded.
- You could ask the court to enforce the contract and make the landscaper fulfill their side of the agreement.
- You could ask for compensation for any actual damages you may have suffered as a result of the breached contract (such as what you had to pay to have poor work fixed)
Sometimes, all it takes to clear up a potential hassle over an unfulfilled contract is a little authoritative communication. Sometimes it takes more. Experienced legal guidance can help.
