My wife & I met with our mechutanim to plan out the wedding & we agreed that we would hire the video guy.
My mechutanim hired a party planner. She also hired a video guy.
I don’t know if my mechutanim requested this or if the party planner did it on her own.
At the wedding, both video guys showed up & they both said that it’s not possible for both of them to do a video since they will get in each other’s way.
I told the video guy that I hired, that I can’t really concentrate on the issue now (right before the chuppah), but I’m okay with whatever he wants to do.
The party planner worked out with them that since she would like to have a broadcast of the men’s side on the women’s side, my video guy could do that for part of the time.
It seems that they also agreed that they would share footage with each other since it wasn’t possible for each to
film everything due to space considerations.
My video guy claims that the party planner promised him at the time of his agreement to do this that he would be compensated for the fact that he wasn’t able to work freely since he had to be attached to a cord for
much of the wedding to do the broadcast.
The party planner claims that she didn’t agree to compensate him.
My video guy refuses to give footage to the other guy until he receives 500 shekel from the party planner for
his compensation. He offered to go to beis din but the party planner has refused.
Now, I don’t want the party planner to pay. Rather, I just want to pay & be finished with the entire affair.
However, my video guy doesn’t want me to pay & told me that I shouldn’t try to play a trick on him by paying & claiming that the party planner paid since he feels it is her responsibility since he thinks she promised to compensate him.
Since I just want to pay him in order to keep the peace between everyone and to get our videos, my question is:
Can I just give the party planner a “gift” of 500 shekels and ask her to please pay my video guy 500 shekels or is this a problem halachicly (sheker, genivas daas, etc)?
Answer:
The main question is whether the party planner’s offer to pay, where the money in fact came from you, will be an issue of geneivas daas: She is ‘pretending’ to be giving in, whereas in fact she received the money from you.
However, I think that in practice this is not a problem. The party planner won’t be giving the money with the intention of making a good impression on the video guy, and this is therefore not similar to cases in which a person wants to make a good and false impression.
Rather, she will simply be doing you a favor of passing on the 500 shekels to the video guy so that you can get your footage. True, the video guy will think that “he won,” but this in itself does not constitute geneivas da’as.
In addition, it is for the sake of Shalom, for which it is permitted to tell a falsehood.
Best wishes.
