QUESTION
Is it legal for a company to demand more money and withhold delivery of a product they entered into contract to build for a specific price?
Asked on Nov 15th, 2018 on Breach of Contract - California
More details to this question:
We hired a California developer to build a mobile app. It's a fixed price project with a very specific set of features that was fleshed out during a thorough discovery process. After paying 50% up front and having completed the design phase, the company contracted has halted development saying they want more money (approx 25% more) than the agreed upon amount in order to complete the project. At every step of the way, their design team consulted their development team in order to make sure that the included features would be viable under the SOW.
1 ANSWER
From what you've written (which is only one side of the story) it appears that the developer is breaching your contract. Assuming that you can't get them to comply, your options are to abandon the project and sue the developer for any damages you've suffered due to the breach of contract, to hire another develper to complete the scope of work and sue the first developer for anyting extra you had to pay over and above the contract price, or to pay the developer what they want and then sue to recover anything extra you paid once the job is done, claiming that the agreement to pay more is invalid because it was entered into under economic curess. This last option is probably the worst, since economic duress is very hard to establish.
Answered on Nov 15th, 2018 at 11:47 AM