That is true, but your lawsuit with the client is a contract dispute. The client can sue you for damages that you caused, which may far exceed what they owe you.
Possibly, and that's how you should handle it. Better to not get into such situations in the first place, because lawsuits will take forever, cost money, end up in mediation, and damage your reputation.
Lawsuits do not damage your reputation, that's BS made up by people who don't want to pay for services.
If you get into a position where mediation is happening, that means you have a piss poor contract, and you should get a new lawyer. Similar for if lawsuits cost you money: your contract terms should include the client covering all legal costs involved in recovering payment.
If you have a customer bad-mouthing you to other business owners, and online, you have sustained damage to your reputation. Even if no one finds out about the lawsuit from public records. For freelancers, and I speak from long experience, word of mouth and referrals and happy customers who will say good things about you count for everything. One angry customer, even if they were legally or morally wrong, can do a lot of damage.
Contracts by themselves don't force the other party to perform according to the contract. A contract only gives the parties evidence of the agreement, which may or may not stand up when interpreted along with other evidence and arguments in front of a mediator. In other words, a contract can't prevent a lawsuit if one party fails to perform -- that's literally how breach of contract lawsuits happen.
Whether a case goes to mediation or not, and who pays legals fees in case of a dispute, is covered by state law. Any provision of a contract that overrides or contradicts state or federal law is void on its face (that's why contracts have a severability clause). 90% of what appears in contracts usually gets covered by state or federal law, it's just boilerplate and attorneys lining their pockets.
I have served as an expert witness in several of these case, in front of arbitrators. The surprising thing, to me, was how little weight the arbitrators gave to the wording of the contract, and how much weight they gave to what was promised, what got delivered, what payments got made, and the apparent intent and motivation of the parties. The mentality that thinks a perfect contract is the key is the same mentality that thinks "the blockchain" is the place for contracts and enforcing them. In real life the state statutes and the presentation to the arbitrator makes the difference. It's more important to carefully document with emails and so on every exchange with the customer.
If you have a bad feeling about the customer, or they have a questionable reputation (ask around!), or they ask you to do something unrealistic, shady, or illegal -- walk away. No contract will save you from them.
That's why unhappy clients are usually regarded as unreliable reporters. I've heard businessmen complain about IT contractors before and I know well to take it with a huge leeway for the other side.
Maybe, but would you hire those contractors? Do you suppose that kind of bad reputation is a good thing, or something a freelancer should ignore?
Almost every one of my customers tells me about the last people they hired and how they didn’t communicate, didn’t deliver on time, kept increasing the price. Way more incompetent and unethical freelancers out there than fraudulent customers in my experience.
I’ve never had a customer stiff me, but I have said no to customers who seem toxic. No amount of legal help can fix that.
I like that this "malicious compliance" doesn't immediately deactivate the client's website, but eventually achieves same outcome (either payment or site deactivation).
From a jurist POV, I think I'd be much more forgiving if this "solution" ended up in a courtroom (i.e. I would side with the fade-out site's creator).
It's not brilliant, it's malicious and not a remedy for breach of contract/non-payment. If someone built a fence for you and then you didn't pay, that doesn't make it OK for them to enter your property and tear the fence down.
FYI civil breach of contract cases like this almost never go to a jury in the US. Mandatory arbitration or small claims for small amounts, heard by a retired judge or professional arbitrator. The process takes a long time, costs money and your time, and very often ends up with a "split the difference" settlement. Lawsuits are public record, the client will badmouth you to everyone, and you can't fix the damage to your reputation.
That's just false equivalence. There's no fence and there definitely isn't any property it's on here. This isn't translating the situation into an analogy, this is straight making things up.
A customer’s web site qualifies as their property. Impairing or destroying their property, or interfering with their business, is actionable under multiple laws. Hacking, broadly defined, is a federal crime in the US.
Not exactly the same as tearing down a fence but not all that different either. Not getting paid for work doesn’t make it ok to punish the customer yourself. The remedy is to sue. If you do end up in court or arbitration, the customer showing that you delivered a disabled site won’t play well for your case.
Just so i'm reading this right, The arbitration recommends "split the difference". This to me means that the client will not pay the agreed contract amount for the work.
If I was the person doing the work here, i'd much rather just take down the site and have them have none of the work, as it encourages this kind of behavior from the customer again, and other customers who know that this happened.
Is removing your work entirely an option ? Not paying the agreed price feels like theft.
Edit: if you are truely correct, why pay for anything ever again, just let it settle in arbitration and save money.
You seem not to consider that in these cases the customer has reasons not to pay. Usually that’s because they don’t think the contractor delivered what they promised, or took too long, or got part-way through the project then jacked up the price. Given a “he said, she said” conflict with no compelling documentation to support either side, the arbitrator may choose to split the difference in some way. These lawsuits frequently turn into ego-driven battles to win at all costs, over relatively small amounts. The arbitrator will want to defuse that rather than pore over the details with a microscope.
The best protection for both sides is to document everything, in writing (email works), so there’s a trail of every decision, every update, and the beginnings of the conflict. A reasonable arbitrator can infer what happened if they have evidence.
Charging for defined deliverables rather than fixed fee for a big project, or hourly, mitigates the risk for both sides. That also requires the freelancer does real analysis and breaks the task into specific tasks and deliverables. I rarely see that when I get called to mop up.
You might be surprised at how many freelancers write a boilerplate contract with vague requirements and deliverables, cash the down payment, then stop communicating with their customer. I’ve made a good living cleaning up after those messes. The customer could have done things differently, of course, but they too often trust the contractor as an expert and don’t understand technical decisions or costs.
As a freelancer you run into unreasonable, crazy, cheap, and toxic customers. Usually lots of red flags. Part of professional freelancing is learning how to identify bad customers and walking away, not trying to draft the perfect contract.
Ah yes, I'm only referring to the case of work clearly meeting deadlines, work clearly meeting specifications, clear paper trails, change requests signed off, then just bailing on the payment. Thanks for the response.