A large local contractor recently learned a very expensive lesson in the need to be able to “prove” your case once you are in court. Although the issues appeared to be clear cut, proving it in court turned out to be much more difficult.

Prior to this dispute, the contractor and the owner of a property had entered into a contract whereby, for a fixed price, the contractor agreed to perform certain renovations. Although it appears there was much friction between the parties after the work was commenced, it wasn’t until the job was just about complete that the owner declared the contractor was in default and sent him notice. In this notice, the owner claimed that because of this default he was not responsible for the balance due under the contract; approximately one half of the total purchase price.

The contractor immediately brought a lawsuit claiming that since the job was substantially completed, he should be entitled to substantially the entire purchase price. The owner defended this action upon his contention that the money he had to pay to complete the balance of the job, exceeded the balance claimed to be due.

At the trial, the plaintiff, contractor, was able to prove to the court’s satisfaction that he had completed 98.9% of the entire job. This fact he maintained entitled him to at least 98.9% of the contract price. The judge, however, even after agreeing, and acknowledging that the contractor had only been paid approximately 50% of the sum he would have received under the contract if the job had been 100% completed, found the contractor had failed to prove he was entitled to additional money from the defendant, owner.

In fact, at the close of the plaintiff’s case, without having the defendant so much as having to produce even one witness, the judge granted the defendant’s oral motion to dismiss the plaintiff’s case upon the grounds he had failed to present a “prima facie” case. This means the judge determined that even though the contractor had proven he had completed 98.9% of the job and had only received 50% of the originally agreed upon price, he had presented no proof whatsoever that the cost to the owner to complete the 1.1% balance of the job would not exceed the balance due.

In making this decision, the judge referred to two decisions of the state’s highest court. The first of these, made in 1900, stood for the proposition that, “A contractor who has substantially performed a contract may receive the contract price minus the cost of completing the contract.” The second decision referred to was from 1905. In this one, the appeals court judge stated, “the contractor has the burden of proving the amount of the cost of completing the unsubstantiated portion of the contract.”

Both rules appear to make sense. In the course of the trial, however, the plaintiff, and apparently his lawyer, overlooked the second one. Although they proved the job was substantially completed and there was a large balance due, they did not present any evidence to show the actual cost to complete the small balance of the job would not be greater than the balance due. Although, logically, that would appear to be true to anyone hearing the case, a court of law requires some proof of this fact and may not, according to these decisions, make such a determination absent such proof.

A technical point? Perhaps, but to this contractor that technicality meant the loss of quite a bit of money. The plaintiff in a lawsuit has the burden to prove each and every point of his case through admissible evidence and testimony. When this burden is met, he is said to have presented a “prima facie” case which would entitle him to victory unless the defendant can then present it’s own evidence to disprove or discredit the evidence. If the plaintiff does not present the required evidence, the judge, as did the one here, will dismiss the case upon the request of the defendant, after the plaintiff rests his case.

Keep in mind that upon the making of this motion, the judge, in his determination as to whether or not there has been a “prima facie” showing, accepts all of the plaintiff’s evidence as fact. The problem here, however, was that there was absolutely no evidence presented to indicate what the cost to complete the job would be, and the judge, after the plaintiff rested and the defendant made his motion, would not allow the plaintiff to re-open his case to present additional evidence on this point.

The lesson here is that just being in the right does not always mean that you’ll be successful in court. You must be able to prove your case to the satisfaction of a judge and/or jury and this process is not always simple.