What is the name of your state? MA
This is regarding my wife who does part time house cleaning to make some extra income.
About 5 weeks ago she was cleaning a house of a certain client, during the cleaning she knocked off a teacup of a display shelf and it broke. The husband of the family where she cleaned was at home at the time, and as she always does my wife informed him of what happened. He did mention that his wife would be upset by this because she was collecting the tea cups and tea sets and that they were pretty rare and valuable. My wife offered to compensate them for the loss and asked him to have his wife contact her to "work things out".
When she called us there was noone home and she left a message. Said that she did want to be compensated and that the cup was valued at 590 Dollars.
I was shocked to say the least when i heard the message. 590 dollars seems like a lot of money for something the size of an expresso cup. After my wife got home we talked things over and decided that we will compensate her for the loss but will require proof of the cups origin/manufacturer and value.
After a few phone conversations we got nowhere, she insists the cup is worth the 590 dollars and she wanted the money. Needless to say we got nowhere and now im faced with a small claims lawsuit.
The lawsuit it for 3400 dollars, she now claims the cups cannot be purchased seperately and to replace the broken one she will have to get a whole new set.
We are not disputing the fact that my wife broke the cup because she did. All we wanted was some type of proof that the cup was worth 590 dollars and we would have payed her the money for the loss. (my wife has been cleaning homes for almost 6 years and breaking things in clients homes is as i would say 'inevitable', and she did pay back for broken things before, including a scratched wooden floor that happened when she moved a sofa to vacuum under it at the cost of 600 dollars to fix and she still cleans that house). This is a really bad situation, my wife lost a client at 8 hours a week at 20 dollars per hour of cleaning, for what seems to us is such a trival matter that could have been resolved easily without the need for court.
The family/client involved are very affluent people, they own a 14 room house that is probably worth 1.5 - 2 mil or more on the market, plus they own a machine shop business. It seems to me the lawsuit is motivated by emotion and not by actual loss because they can easily afford to replace the item. Like i said before we would have absolutely no problems compensating for the loss if we had confirmation of the items value.
What do you think we should do? Should i try talking to the client again and get this resolved? What could happen at the courthouse during the hearing?
Would we be liable for the cup even if she fails to provide proof of its worth?
On last note, this client hasnt been exactly holly during the time my wife worked for them. My wife was always paid for their house cleaning by checks issued from their machine shop business and as such we/she received 1099-MISC twice from their business for tax purposes. Can they do that? Or is that illegal?
I really would want this resolved without going to court. It seems to me this is a mess that never should have occurred.
Any adive/comments are greatly appreciated.
This is regarding my wife who does part time house cleaning to make some extra income.
About 5 weeks ago she was cleaning a house of a certain client, during the cleaning she knocked off a teacup of a display shelf and it broke. The husband of the family where she cleaned was at home at the time, and as she always does my wife informed him of what happened. He did mention that his wife would be upset by this because she was collecting the tea cups and tea sets and that they were pretty rare and valuable. My wife offered to compensate them for the loss and asked him to have his wife contact her to "work things out".
When she called us there was noone home and she left a message. Said that she did want to be compensated and that the cup was valued at 590 Dollars.
I was shocked to say the least when i heard the message. 590 dollars seems like a lot of money for something the size of an expresso cup. After my wife got home we talked things over and decided that we will compensate her for the loss but will require proof of the cups origin/manufacturer and value.
After a few phone conversations we got nowhere, she insists the cup is worth the 590 dollars and she wanted the money. Needless to say we got nowhere and now im faced with a small claims lawsuit.
The lawsuit it for 3400 dollars, she now claims the cups cannot be purchased seperately and to replace the broken one she will have to get a whole new set.
We are not disputing the fact that my wife broke the cup because she did. All we wanted was some type of proof that the cup was worth 590 dollars and we would have payed her the money for the loss. (my wife has been cleaning homes for almost 6 years and breaking things in clients homes is as i would say 'inevitable', and she did pay back for broken things before, including a scratched wooden floor that happened when she moved a sofa to vacuum under it at the cost of 600 dollars to fix and she still cleans that house). This is a really bad situation, my wife lost a client at 8 hours a week at 20 dollars per hour of cleaning, for what seems to us is such a trival matter that could have been resolved easily without the need for court.
The family/client involved are very affluent people, they own a 14 room house that is probably worth 1.5 - 2 mil or more on the market, plus they own a machine shop business. It seems to me the lawsuit is motivated by emotion and not by actual loss because they can easily afford to replace the item. Like i said before we would have absolutely no problems compensating for the loss if we had confirmation of the items value.
What do you think we should do? Should i try talking to the client again and get this resolved? What could happen at the courthouse during the hearing?
Would we be liable for the cup even if she fails to provide proof of its worth?
On last note, this client hasnt been exactly holly during the time my wife worked for them. My wife was always paid for their house cleaning by checks issued from their machine shop business and as such we/she received 1099-MISC twice from their business for tax purposes. Can they do that? Or is that illegal?
I really would want this resolved without going to court. It seems to me this is a mess that never should have occurred.
Any adive/comments are greatly appreciated.