NYS: Contract verbage that allows us to collect cos in court if "unsuccessfully sued"
We are a small web development business LLC in NYS.
we have an agreement of sorts that clients sign before we begin work in which we basically try to layout what we are offering and what we are not. we wrote it ourselves, acquiring bits from samples around the web. so fully understand it is not as good as it can be in protecting our interests. one element we would like to address was inspired by a recent small claims case someone filed against us for the first time.
a woman who had been through two failed attempts with two other developers was directed to us by a good client. the fact that she had conflict with the previous two devs was of course a red flag but we agreed to work with her because of the relationship with the long-standing client. we have consulted with an attorney and actually have him representing us in small claims court. he assures us she has nothing to gain though we ought to be entitled to late fees as she bounced a check payment to us and then refused to make good on it for four months until we got the District Attorney involved. the client, of course, has been twice now had the case adjourned and we expect she wont even show up to this last court date as she knows she believes what we believe,.. she has no right to anything from us.
however, we have incurred hundreds of dollars in legal fees, hours at night court, etc. nothing new.
is there any verbage we can include in our client agreements for the future that state the client agrees to indemnify us for legal costs, lost time at work, whatever,... if they sue us on a bogus suit such as this one and are not awarded anything? maybe something someone can point us to online to see how this might be worded, if it is something we can actually do, etc.
We are a small web development business LLC in NYS.
we have an agreement of sorts that clients sign before we begin work in which we basically try to layout what we are offering and what we are not. we wrote it ourselves, acquiring bits from samples around the web. so fully understand it is not as good as it can be in protecting our interests. one element we would like to address was inspired by a recent small claims case someone filed against us for the first time.
a woman who had been through two failed attempts with two other developers was directed to us by a good client. the fact that she had conflict with the previous two devs was of course a red flag but we agreed to work with her because of the relationship with the long-standing client. we have consulted with an attorney and actually have him representing us in small claims court. he assures us she has nothing to gain though we ought to be entitled to late fees as she bounced a check payment to us and then refused to make good on it for four months until we got the District Attorney involved. the client, of course, has been twice now had the case adjourned and we expect she wont even show up to this last court date as she knows she believes what we believe,.. she has no right to anything from us.
however, we have incurred hundreds of dollars in legal fees, hours at night court, etc. nothing new.
is there any verbage we can include in our client agreements for the future that state the client agrees to indemnify us for legal costs, lost time at work, whatever,... if they sue us on a bogus suit such as this one and are not awarded anything? maybe something someone can point us to online to see how this might be worded, if it is something we can actually do, etc.