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I took A Different Contractor For Phase 2 of the Job

Question:

A friend of mine hired someone to do a job for him in 2 phases & a price was agreed upon. the worker did the first phase and then a different worker that was doing work in his house did the 2nd phase of the work done by the original guy. my friend asked him if he would take off some money from the price since he didnt do phase 2 and the contractor said he wanted the full originaly agreed upon price. the contractor said “if you would’ve called me to discuss this before then maybe i would’ve taken some off but since you didnt then i want the full amount. i tried reviewing the sugya with my chavrusa and saw the Nesivos, the Ran, and several other mephorshim but cant decide if this is a “kablon” or “poel”. please help us. thank you.

Answer:

It is difficult to know whether the contractor is a poel or kablan without knowing the details of the job involved and the employment agreement.

However, since it was not actually the contractor who retracted from the agreement but the employer, and as such it does not really make a difference whether he is a poel or kablan, and either way you will need to pay him like a poel battel for the work that he did not do.

Depending on the circumstances, it may be possible to consider the two phases as two different contracts, in which case you might not need to pay for the second phase at all, if you retracted before he began work on this phase and he did not give up any other job in order to take on your job.

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