Is there a statute requiring contractors to bill in a timely manner? Let’s say that Bob has work done to his home. Some payments are made per the contract, but the final payment requires some adjustments to be made to account for changes agreed to during the project, so the amount is unknown. However, following completion of the project the contractor goes quiet. For several months… Is there any period of time after which the contractor’s right to bill and expect timely payment will have expired? Ethically Bob should pay them for work done, but just in case there is a dispute over the adjustments Bob would seem to have greater leverage to negotiate the longer the contractor takes to submit an invoice. (i.e. if the contractor takes 6 months to submit a final invoice wouldn’t it be fair for Bob to have 6 months to negotiate or pay?) Is there any statute of limitations beyond which Bob is considered to be out from under the terms of the contract? (Presume that terms of the contract are not tied to the lifespan of any British royalty…)
The statute of limitations for a breach of contract applies. This is four years in Washington State. But, if a claim isn't made within a much shorter period of time after the last work is done (typically a few months at most), the contract waives the contractor's right to a mechanic's lien in the property to enforce those contract rights. This deadline in 90 days in most cases in Washington State (with quite a bit of case law spelling out when you start counting). The contract can, of course, provide for other deadlines and consequences for not meeting them, and frequently would, especially in a construction loan financed project.
am I obligated to pay this fee? Yes. You entered the lease despite been aware of the existence of that fee. That meets the contract law tenet that an agreement be entered knowingly and willfully. Does it not invoke an issue where they can arbitrarily set the price? If the landlord requires a fee that is unreasonably high, that would violate the contract law covenant of good faith and fair dealing. As such, that part would be unenforceable, meaning that the landlord may only charge a reasonable fee. Likewise, unless the lease clearly entitles the landlord to decide the telecom fee arbitrarily, the lease would fail to meet that extent of the aforementioned tenet of a contract being entered knowingly. Does this fall under the category of lease addendum? The form (or format) in which the requirement of telecom fee was mentioned --and agreed upon-- does not matter. The landlord only would need to prove that the tenant was --or should have been-- aware of that fee. Usually the landlord can prove that by showing/producing in court the lease with tenant's signature.
First of all, there is no breach - they said they would pay it "over the course of the first year"; in what way is the first week not part of the first year? Second, breaching a contract doesn't always allow the aggrieved party to terminate it: in fact, being able to terminate is only for the most egregious of breaches or ones that are specifically spelled out as giving a right to termination. For example, failure to deliver (or pay) on time or in full would not allow termination, only damages.
We don't give specific legal advice and one might VTC, but I think your phrasing is not quite right, and you are just curious about the possibility of binding the landlord to a term across leases. The first thing that a term in a contract has to so is say exactly what must be done by whom (or not done). You need to describe more precisely what it means for all future rent and rent increases to be commensurate with the current rent. You can think of conditions like &quot;no more than 2% per annum&quot; or &quot;no more than 15% per annum&quot;, and then you can figure out what number is acceptable to the two of you. I would be surprised if you could come up with an agreeable number. Second, you'd have to make this limit &quot;perpetual&quot;, which is pretty much impossible. You could negotiate the terms of the next lease today which would prevent an increase of rent by more thay you're happy with, but until governmental controls say exactly what a legal rent increase is, the property owner has the right to raise the rent by a million dollars, and you have the right to move elsewhere. It's as hard to permanently lock a landlord into an arrangement as it is to lock a tenant into renting a specific residence. Every year, you have the right to terminate the lease if the rent goes too high for you, and every year the landlord has the right to raise the rent if the current arrangement isn't sufficiently profitable. Incidentally, you might want to check with AHFC to see if you can actually do this. Your expectations don't determine what relief they provide, just make sure that you provided accurate answers to their questions and reported all income that you're required to report.
"There's no ... contract" - wrong! The emails are the contract, see What is a contract and what is required for them to be valid? If you didn't agree on which laws will apply then that is a matter for the court to determine. In general, they will tend to look at where the bulk of the work was done - since you are being charged I assume the work was done in the UK so probably UK law applies, noting that the UK is actually 3 different jurisdictions (England &amp; Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland). That said, many jurisdictions have non-excludable laws around contracts, particularly consumer contracts that apply irrespective of the substantial law applying to the contract. It is therefore possible that you apply English contract law subject to, for example, Australian Consumer Law. Usually any consumer protection law in the vendor's jurisdiction will also apply. General contract law dictates that where a price was not agreed a reasonable price must be paid. If its reasonable that the editing should have been included in the original price charged then you don't have to pay more but if it isn't then you have to pay a reasonable amount for it. There is generally no requirement for estimates or any other method of determining the price - you just have to do what's reasonable. However, consumer protection law generally imposes more obligations on a business than general contract law. It is likely that your contract is ambiguous - courts will endeavor to fill in any ambiguities to make the contract work. techniques include read in implied terms to give "business efficiency", from custom or business usage (e.g. if particular industries typically deal with particular issues in particular ways), from previous dealings (i.e. what the parties have done in the past), from statutes, whatever works to resolve uncertain, meaningless or ambiguous terms, from the express words used or from the nature of the contract or from the common intention of the parties (i.e. the court might ask you what you meant). "Breach of contract" is a very broad term - it simply means that one of the parties hasn't done what they were required to do and allows the other party to sue for damages.
This practice is probably not illegal, but I think it is at best ethically dubious. The invoice specifies &quot;&quot;Advising in relation to employment agreement with X&quot;, but according to the question no advice about X was given or even asked for, and while advice about Y was discussed, no such advice was given. That suggests that the asker owes the solicitor nothing. However the asker was informed of the hourly charge and then continued to discuss the issue. it could be argued that the constitutes an implicit contract to pay that rate for those discussions. It seems that the asker never said &quot;does that rate apply to this telephone call&quot;, nor did the solicitor say &quot;that hourly clock starts now if you want to continue&quot;. This leaves the situation less clear than it could have been. The second email, as described, seems to imply that the work of giving advice had not yet commenced, and thus no fee was due for services to date. A person in this situation could reply with a letter (sent by email or postal mail or better both) saying that no advice was given, no useful service was performed, and there was no agreement to pay for any service, so no fee is due. If the solicitor takes this to a court case, the asker may well want to consider consulting a different legal professional. This is a case where the exact facts may well matter, so no more precise answer can, I think, be given here.
If it's not in the lease agreement, then you did not agree to it. Even in the absence of the law prohibiting the late fee, the landlord would not be able to impose it because it is not in the lease. It is of course up to you whether you want to test it. It may be more trouble than it is worth. Then again, it's probably not worth the landlord's trouble to begin eviction proceedings over a late fee. Paying late and refusing to pay the fee would probably sour your relationship with the landlord, which is usually something you want to avoid. If you do pay late at some point, you may want to point out to the landlord the relevant provision of Massachusetts law. The matter would probably end there: either the landlord doesn't know about it, or the landlord is hoping that you don't know about it. Pointing it out in a polite manner will inform the landlord of the law and that you are acquainted with the law. Unless the landlord is quite unreasonable, that should take care of it. Whether there is any law prohibiting landlords from announcing an intention to take a prohibited action is indeed a different question. Is there any legal reason for me to bring this up and get the landlord to formally acknowledge that they will not in fact charge illegal late fees? No. You have a contract with the landlord that already says you are going to move in. He cannot modify that contract simply by sending you a letter.
if a manager emailed an prospective employee a contract containing the pay rate of $20/hr, if the prospective employee crossed out $20/hr and replaced it with $25/hr, then went to work and gave the manager the contract which he failed to carefully read, continued working for a few months, would the employee be entitled to $20/hr? A party ought to timely alert or notify the other counterparty about any disagreements or proposed changes. This is especially recommendable when evidence suggests that the counterparty's expectation that the party only would sign the contract was reasonable. In the example you outline, the employee's unilateral alteration of the compensation/rate in the contract seems unlikely to favor the employee's position. That is because typically employer and employee negotiate compensation prior to formalizing their agreement. In that case, the employee would need stronger evidence with which to overcome the employer's credible argument that he did not knowingly accept the altered rate.