Construction company halts work despite overpayment

It did not go to court. The BU agreed to the settlement 2 weeks before the court date after 5 months of hesitant negotiations and long pauses during which there was no reaction from his side at all. His lawyer told my lawyer afterwards that he thought until the end that we would cancel the contract.

Well done. I still believe that cancellation would have been the worst of all the alternatives mentioned here. Basically, of course, the construction work still matters, but as I read, you have professional support there.

That's exactly right: quitting was out of the question. Then we would have had to pay the BU "lost profit" for the remaining work, find a new construction company to continue the existing botch job, fix the numerous defects, take over the warranty, or we would have been left without warranty for what had already been built. Moreover, it would have become significantly more expensive. The overpayment would have been nicely accounted for by the BU and we would have been the fools having to pay him without receiving any service in return. The advice given here in the forum in this direction was certainly well-intentioned but unacceptable in our situation. But it was really tough. There were days when I vomited from morning till evening, my stomach was constantly upset. I lost over 10 kg during that time. The worst time was when I found out about the second company registration and about statements that he would rather go bankrupt than continue building with us. Those were awful 9 months in which we didn’t know how to proceed.

Good that it worked out!

what exactly made him change his mind? you didn't actually have any leverage, did you?

I asked around and made contact with others affected as well. I would have preferred to report him for fraud, but that would have ruined the settlement. When I saw no other way, I called his wife and asked if she knew what was going on. She supposedly didn’t know, so I told her. Ten minutes after that phone call, my lawyer called; by then the BU lawyer had contacted him. The next day I received a registered letter with a cease and desist demand, a bill for about €900, and a cease and desist declaration with penalty clause. New lawyer, because the old one was not allowed or willing to represent me in this matter, and the whole thing was shut down. A week later we had a contract performance bond and a signed settlement. That may sound pretty casual now, but it really wasn’t.

Crazy. Your call seems to have had some effect, or was it the new lawyer? Was the old lawyer out because of that?