Virginia construction lawyer Chris Hill’s Construction Law Musings combines resilience with quality. Hill’s blog has ranked highly in several previous Construction Marketing Ideas Best Construction Blog competitions, and deserves recognition again this year.
His posts combine depth with solid writing and, while he writes for his Virginia market area, most of his content is relevant elsewhere in the US and Canada.
Consider this post: Review the Terms and Conditions of Purchase Orders?– They Could be Important!? Although the legal case rightfully relates to a Virginia court action, I think the issues raised here would apply anywhere. The issue is that purchase order documentation compelled arbitration as the route to settle payment disputes; and the contractor submitted several invoices based on the purchase order wording before filing a lawsuit for non-payment of three invoices.
The court ruled:
Indeed, a contract may arise from the parties? conduct. Here, the record plainly reflects that, on nineteen different occasions: (1) AGY emailed QPS its Terms and Conditions in the same email as the purchase order; (2) QPS did not object to the Terms and Conditions or discuss them in any way; and, (3) QPS then issued an invoice to AGY. At a minimum, under these circumstances, the Court finds that the Terms and Conditions applied to the agreement between AGY and QPS by implication. Accordingly, the Court finds that the parties agreed to the Arbitration Clause.
Hill concludes:
The lesson? Always review terms and conditions along with all documents that are exchanged. While it is tempting not to read the fine print, this fine print can and will be used against you later.
I think you’ll find this blog to be a great example of how a professional service provider? can maintain an effective communications resource with current and potential clients, and certainly consider this to be one of the most worthy entries in the 2018 competition.
You can vote for the blog(s) of your choice here:
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