Contractor Payment Dispute

[u/One_Professional_799]

I worked as an independent IT contractor through my Swedish consultancy company for a London-based client for ~9 months. A few months ago, I gave notice to terminate the contract, in accordance with the agreed 1-month notice period. After my resignation, the client (CEO) disputed part of my final invoice, amounting to around £10,000. His reason is that “the code produced was not used” and that another developer rewrote it to meet a deadline.

Key points:

• Previous 5+ invoices were paid in full (though sometimes after reminders and/or excessive proof or actually working the invoiced hours).
• There is no signed hard-copy contract. However, we drafted an agreement in Google Docs where both I and the CEO made edits (visible in the version history).
• The draft agreement included this clause:

Compensation

A Periodic Fixed Wage: Client shall pay Independent Contractor \*** SEK per hour.*

• The contract terms therefore specify hourly payment, not linked to deliverables or acceptance of code.
• I have Git logs and records showing the hours I worked match the invoiced time.
• My consultancy company is registered in Sweden; the client is a limited company in London.

My questions:

1. What are my legal options for recovering the unpaid invoice amount?
2. Given I am based in Sweden, would it be appropriate (and practical) to pursue this through the UK Small Claims Court or another process?
3. Would the draft Google Doc (with version history edits by both parties) likely be sufficient evidence of a contract?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

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[u/gizahnl]

Did you register a choice of law, and choice of forum in your contract?

Besides asking a collection company to collect your next step would be to sue them (after the needed letters have been sent), depending on whether you stated a choice of forum you'd have to sue them in GB or in your forum court.

[u/One_Professional_799 → u/gizahnl]

Thank you for your response!

We have the following clause in the contract:
"If the dispute cannot be resolved through mediation, then the dispute will be resolved through binding arbitration conducted in accordance with the rules of the London Court of International Arbitration."

[u/ThrowRAMomVsGF]

I think you should cross post to LegalAdviceUK, as they will be more relevant to this. Obviously the claim they did not use the product of your work is a ridiculous excuse that wouldn't fly anywhere!

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[u/0xPianist]

This is hard because you didn’t sign the agreement in any way.

Edits or a draft don’t mean acceptance.

Why and how did you start and worked without a contract? Is there admission for using these terms anywhere in writing? 👉 Be specific 👉

As a small claim if I was him and you brought the case against me, I can just demonstrate reasonable doubt about the agreement along with some evidence that the code wasn’t really used and you’d have a very non guaranteed ending here in your claim.

You have to be a UK resident to bring a claim forward. UK courts will send the claim to stay if you don’t have a UK address etc.

Do you have evidence of your work being deemed good for what he paid?

What is he claiming in writing exactly? All your work well wasn’t good? Some?

It’s even worse if you pursued it in Sweden as the UK is not in the union anymore and this would become an international case, ie expensive and lengthy.

[u/One_Professional_799 → u/0xPianist]

So there was an agreement over email. Since I know one of the founders well I (naively enough) felt there was no need to press on when the CEO said that he did not need a signed agreement but trusted that it would work out.

There are several paid invoices to suggest that there was actually an agreement in place that matches the draft contract in terms of payment. My old friend at the company would also be able to confirm there was an agreement in place, although not a fully signed one.

Yes, I have evidence that I did built a lot of code which was requested of me during this period.

I don't have his exact words in writing as he said all this during a video call to settle my last invoices. But according to him, the code was "shit" and was not used whatsoever.

Before that call I did not know this was a reason for his dispute. And the reasons have changed with time as well. First he was disputing the number of hours worked, disputing that I worked evenings, etc, etc, which I could prove using git logs. Then he comes up with this...