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MOSBY'S, INC. Craig Barnes GOLIATH TRIES TO BULLY INDIVIDUALS LOUISVILLE Kentucky
I am a web developer with 10 years of experience building websites for small businesses. Six years ago I built a site for Mosby's Trucking & Towing. They love the site I developed for them and, in their words, I produced a design that was comparable to much more expensive design firms. I hosted the site and it was complete except for one Flash animation that they wanted to run at the homepage when someone visited the site. At the time Flash was going out of style and it became time-prohibitive for me to build the one animation. I only billed them for 50% of the total cost of the site and I decided to host their site for free (a $900 value) to make up for the missing animation (see attached images for invoice). But otherwise the site was complete and they were delighted with it. Six years later I received a letter from their attorney threatening me with a lawsuit if I didn't give them the full website files. Now, to put this in perspective, this is the equivalent of asking a professional photographer to take pictures of you and give you the negatives. It doesn't happen. In the invoice I gave them it detailed the scope of the work and nowhere on there does it state that they would get the website files and the images I'd built (again, see attached invoice). But to be amicable I offered to give the files to them provided they gave me a release of any future claims (since they clearly have no concept of gratitude for what they did receive and want what isn't theirs).
This has turned into over a month of wrangling with their attorney over the terms of the release. I then learned that they'd been bad mouthing me during these negotiations and when I asked their attorney to include strong language that penalizes either of us (this includes me!) for speaking negatively of the other they refuse and are threatening to escalate this to a lawsuit. Frankly, they don't have a case, the agreement is clear, this is a small claims amount and the statute of limitations is 5 years. BUT if they pursue this it will be a waste of time and money for me. So clearly their goal is to bully and intimidate me into giving them what isn't rightfully theirs. As a web designer I work with all kinds of small business owners, mostly really great people trying to provide for their families and take care of their employees. But from time to time I run across chronic abusers who seem friendly and considerate at first but keep dragging things out and asking for more and more and more. I try to accommodate, especially because I understand that most of the time, my clients don't really fully know what they need until we get into the project and once we get underway they will realize there are some things they hadn't initially thought of. But there comes a point where enough is enough. I want everyone to know that if you're doing business with Mosby's, Inc., get paid up front, and have a detailed contract that spells out their responsibilities and yours so they can't do to you what they're trying to do to me.