When a general contractor does work under a time and materials contract, can or should he be held responsible for defective materials that were selected, purchased and provided to him by the customer?
Responsible to whom?
To the person paying the bill, of course. And yes, that is something he has to worry about.
If the roof fails and he specified everything he is always liable.
In this instance the customer provided the floor tile, which were properly installed. They have a problem with the stiles marring and recieving scratches from normal use. There were no problems with the workmanship. The product appears defective.
Here at the SDMB we don’t give legal advice. Sorry. 
You might try asking your question here: http://www.lawguru.com/cgi/bbs/user/submit.cgi
Gfactor, you might want to become a nonfactor on this thread.
Gfactor’s right, but instead of just telling you to go pound sand (like I would have), he pointed you toward a resource that could answer your question.
Here’s part of the problem: to answer your question, we’d need to know (a) the law and (b) the facts. We know neither; I don’t know what jurisdiction you’re in (or whether that jurisdiction’s law applies); we don’t know what the contract says; and we don’t know what the relationship among the parties is (who said what, whether there’s been a course of dealing,etc.). All of those things would be needed to give you an answer to your specific question.
I will correct Gfactor on one point, though. You *will *get legal advice on the SDMB, just not from lawyers. Which is yet another good reason why you ought to go to the resource to which you’ve been directed and try there. Good luck.
And if this was the pit I could tell you to go pound something else.
Try this scenario:
You hire a plumber to install a new sink and fixtures, provided by you. After one week of normal use the sink is all scratched up. Is the plumber responsible for correcting the problem?
Yes
Now, I predict that the next answers will be varieties of “yes, I think so because that’s only fair if he installed it,” and “no, because it’s not fair to make him responsible for the product if he didn’t pick it.”
At the end of the day, in my legal opinion, you’ve not given us enough information to give you an informed, defensible opinion.
I concur.
OK let me try to clear it up the best I can although I’m sure it won’t satisfy any of the previous posters.
I was a sub on the job. Hired independently and paid directly by the homeowner. The only thing on my punch list was one small screw. To give you an idea of the type of people I’m talking about, the owners made me come back for an item worth less than one cent and they could have fixed in less than one minute.
The general and the homeowners are(were?) friends. I’ve known and worked with the general on a number of jobs and he is the best I’ve dealt with and other subs agree.
The story I was told by the GC was that he foolishly agreed to help his friends remodel and they had pretty much an informal arrangement. He cut his normal fee by half. They said they would provide some materials such as ceiling fixtures and a few other items they had gotten a great deal on at eBay. He said fine. Then the woman showed up with a floor tile that she purchased herself. The job was finished and the flooring, which was installed properly and free from any apparent defects began to have problems. They are holding back money until he replaces the tile.
What happens in this type of situation where a written contract is missing?
Unfortunately, your actual rights to payment and the ability to be paid are not the same. Your only real hope is to wait for somebody to fix the problem and at that point negotiate a payment. Going the legal route, even if you have a solid case is never worth the effort. I go to court all the time for landlord, tenant problems, and every time I wish to hell I had swallowed my pride and negotiated for less than I was owed because I still would have come out ahead. Once the customer is happy it’s a lot easier to figure out who gets paid what.
If the materials were defective it seems logical that the GC would look to his suppler for redress, circle closed. The homeowners are going after the wrong person, they can go after the seller on Ebay, or just eat it, which is probably what they deserve for trying to be cheap. You normally get what you pay for.
“You get what you pay for” is a maxim that applies to message board legal advice as well. The laws regarding contractor liability and mechanic’s liens vary from state to state, and there are concerns not only of what the status of the law is but what necessary facts can and cannot be proven in court; the contractor needs to discuss with an attorney familiar with the laws of his jurisdiction. After a 45 minute conversation and some research, I could probably give you a very good answer about the contractor’s possibility of recovery in my state that could be completely worthless in yours, if not downright harmful. The contractor should talk to an attorney or two in his jurisdiction about his possibilities of recovery.
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CBEscapee, your question has been answered the best way we can. We are not a free law advice service. While we have lawyers who are members, they know better than to give advice for a particular scenario.
GFactor, please leave the moderating to the Mods. If you have a thread you feel is in violation of any of our rules, please use the “Report Post” button and we’ll look into it.
This thread is closed.
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