Landscaping Contract

We have a Landscaping Contractor who has charged our Association for at least a thousand bales of pinestraw that we know he did not put out. We have people that saw them put out loose pinestraw from trailers and even have pictures of this happening. We have refused to pay the full amount and our attorney insist we have no case. We have pictures of his workers putting out the pine straw and the final result.
Does anyone have advise or similar experiences?

I suggest getting another landscape company to come out look at the work he did and advise if he feels that was 1000 bales of pine straw placed throughout the community, then you would have a good idea if he indeed did install the pine straw.

DavidH4 - it sounds like the contractor padded the bill and bought pine straw for more than just your association. it also sounds like your association was already skeptical of the contractor to be taking pictures of the work being performed. you need unit's of measure. what is the size of the area the contractor covered in pine straw? buy a bale of pine straw and see how much area and height it covers. take the area the contractor covered and divide it by the area you covered and multiply it by the cost per bale the contractor charged. this will give you as close of an empirical piece of evidence as you can get. unless the new landscaper is willing to show up in court or provide a written statement refuting the work of the original contractor, i would not rely on his/her word that the contractor did not do an adequate job. also, didn't the board approve the work and $14,000 expense prior to it being performed?

DavidH4 - if you are unwilling or unable to perform the exercise as i've described than you have absolutely no basis to refute the contractor's claim of the bales he used or cost involved. seems to me the service should have been part of the contract. if not, than the work was additional, and additional work should be approved by the board. if the contractor performed unauthorized work, his bill is baseless. pose this to the attorney and take the attorney's advise.

Melissa
Coming from a farming community, I would say they had best had a tractor trailer for 1000 bales of straw. Hard to miss one of those.

Jim

The bill has not been paid, in fact it's two months overdue. We offered him a settlement, but he refused. I think he knows he has us where he wants us and thinks we will not pursue it. He is probably right. Depends on how the board votes tonight.

The contract called for this amount of pinestraw and it is used as a ground cover in landscaped areas of our Townhome area and the common areas of the front entrance and throughout the single family homes area where there is common areas. The qproblem is not that it was suppose to be put down, it is that we do not feel it "was" put down.

Thanks to everyone who responded. You gave me a lot of information to think about. Board meeting is 4 hours away, so I gess I have the info or amunition I need.
Thanks again.
Dave

Could we be mixing the apples with the oranges on this one? IF the amount of pine straw is in the lawncare contract then it could be part of the payment agreement. The lawncare person could have put that cost into their bid for their expenses. However, it could also be written that the HOA will PROVIDE the bales and the lawncare person is to spread it. Which means the HOA should have paid for the straw and had the lawncare person do the work. I believe your HOA did a combination of this. The HOA isn't in the lawncare business and just let the lawncare person "take over" and order the materials. Not that unusual.
I do question the large amount of the supposed bill that was submitted. My question is that amount of the total bill of hay bales or the total amount of the lawncare contract? If the lawncare person is wanting to "quit" he may be asking to get out of his contract by having the HOA pay off the contract. That contract entitles the lawncare person to the amount in the contract.
I found out the hardway with our lawncare. When I got rid of our lawncare person, it turns out the former president (con-artist) had made a "deal" with him a few years prior. He started his contract in May instead of the regular April start date in the contract. When I let the original lawncare go and hired the new one, I had to pay an extra month to the former one. He didn't work that month, it was just in his original contract that he started a different month.
I found out that years earlier our HOA had gotten "sued" for $40K when the president made a "verbal" agreement to pay a lawncare company $40K a year to do the lawncare. However, at the last minute that president hired a different company. Unfornately, that meant the original "verbal" agreement could hold up in court (in our state) and the HOA had to pay out the contract even with NO work ever being done by them.
So be careful. If you need a lawyer, get a lawyer familiar with contractual law. I don't believe I would pursue the matter and try to find a way to get rid of the contractor. It may be "cheaper" just to payout the remaining contract and hire a new group. Next time, take atleast 3 bids and do a complete review of the needs of the community. Make sure it is understood who buys the materials. Our HOA would buy the flowers and have lawncare put them in. That way the flower money came out directly out of the HOA budget and wasn't a separate bill submitted by an outside contractor.

As Ronald said I think when you hire someone to do a job they need to supply material. David, I think your HOA made a mistake and now you are caught in the crossfire. Whenever you have something of that magnitude happening someone from the board should have been on hand to do a partial count to verify. Furthermore, growing up on a farm there are a million and one ways to come up with what is a bale of straw. You can manipulate size and how much is packed into each bale which would could cause a huge discrepancy. You give me any trailer and I can get 1,000 bales of straw on it, unless you clarify the size of the bale.

As Joe suggested you should buy a couple of bales of straw, spread them out to the thickness that your landscaper did and measure how much square footage they cover. Then determine how much 1,000 bales would cover. Talk with a couple of other landscaping companies and get their feel for how much 1,000 bales would cover. Take that information and try to settle with this guy. If confronted with real information he isn't going to fight you.

If your unwilling to do that, pay the man, chalk it up to a lesson learned.

MelissaP1,

Apparently I once again failed to make my point clear. It has nothing to do with the conditions of a homeowner's fence.

When an HOA (or you as an individual) furnish materials for a job and hire the labor to install those materials, you, as the HOA or an individual, take the responsibility for the quality of the materials. If a contractor supplies materials and labor, the contractor is responsible for the entire job.

Let's go back to the flowers. You hire a contractor to plant and care for the flowers. The flowers die. You have every right to expect the contractor to replace the flowers and furnish the labor to replant them. On the other hand, if you buy the flowers at the home center and pay a contractor to plant and care for the flowers and they die, the contractor might say that they were diseased or defective to start with and refuse to pay for new flowers or the labor to replant them. Now let's say that the flowers actually were diseased and you took them back to the home center and the home center replaced the fowers for you. You would still have to pay the contractor again to plant them.

Let's try another example. You want a new faucet in your kitchen sink. If you pay a plumber to supply and install the faucet, any problems within the warranty period will be covered by the plumber at no charge to you. Suppose instead, you decide to saye a few dollars by buying the faucet at the home center and just pay the plumber to install it. A few months from now, the faucet develops a leak. Even though it has a manufacturer's warranty, you will have to pay the plumber to remove it so you can take it back to the home center for a replacement and pay him again to install the replacement.

Am I making myself clear?

Old thread reactivated for the purpose of spam