An architectural designer was so “overly optimistic” about his prospects of landing a house design job that he sent an invoice for work he hadn’t been contracted to do.

The designer, who was working as a real estate agent, met a woman at an open home, and they discussed their mutual interest in “passive home design”, with the woman sharing that she was considering building a new house.

The pair chatted about it, and he said he’d keep in touch before entering her into his IT system as a “client”.

They had some initial meetings, and the designer offered some preliminary drawings.

But, she was caught by surprise when an invoice for $3450 arrived.

The designer took the woman to the Disputes Tribunal, claiming he should receive the full payment for the 30 hours’ work he did. She counter-claimed for $1999, alleging he breached the Fair Trading Act.

An ‘overly optimistic’ view of the client-designer relationship

The issue the tribunal needed to address, outlined in a recently released ruling, was whether the pair had entered into a verbal contract.

The pair, whose names are redacted, met at an open home in September 2022 and the woman told the designer she was considering building a home.

They chatted and the designer offered to keep in touch with her.

In early 2023, the woman invited the designer to have a look at the property she was intending to build on, which he did. The woman also emailed him a copy of the site survey plan.

The designer told the tribunal he understood the woman was in “no hurry to build”.

The designer said when he offered to do some “working drawings”, she responded that “maybe they could talk in a month”.

He emphasised she said she would “talk to [him] re working drawings”, and suggested this showed a commitment to wanting to work with him.

However, adjudicator Sarah Simmonds found the “overall tenor” of the woman’s response was to deflect his suggestion that he do the work.

The woman described feeling he was “all over her like a rash”.

“I certainly agree that [the designer] seemed very determined to be involved and I find that [the woman] was trying to gently rebuff him, by her responses,” Simmonds said.

In March, the parties met, together with the woman’s new partner and a builder friend of hers. The builder had done some concept drawings of a possible new house.

The designer described it as a “handover meeting”, where the project was being handed over to him to take on.

However, Simmonds noted the designer wanted it rescheduled because he was sick, but the woman was happy to go ahead with or without him.

She in “no way considered [his] attendance at that meeting to be important”.

After the meeting, the designer emailed a fee proposal, but the woman didn’t respond.

About an hour later, he rang, and the woman said it looked great.

However, he accepted that at no time did she say anything to the effect that she was authorising him to start work.

However, at the end of that day’s meeting, he said she told him all she needed was his fee proposal, and he’d taken that to mean she was happy for him to do the work.

Simmonds disagreed with his reasoning.

He said the woman had been out when the designer rang, and only had a quick glance at the proposal.

“Any reasonable person would want more than 45 minutes to decide whether to enter a $13,800 contract,” Simmonds said.

“If [the woman] wanted to engage [the designer] based on how she generally speaks, it is more likely than not that she would have expressly said so.”

The designer had a “very persistent tone from [the designer] and a very non-committal one from [the woman]”.

Simmonds said the designer had interpreted events as evidence of a client-designer relationship, but this was perhaps because he set the woman up as a client after they first met, which was an “overly optimistic interpretation of the situation”.

The $3450 invoice related to about 30 hours’ work – “there were contour drawings done which considered the setbacks, and research about cladding types”.

However, there had been no formal contract entered into, nor a “quasi-contract” as the woman had not received anything from the work, nor encouraged him to do the work, and she’d never intended to enter a legally binding relationship.

“She met [the designer] as a real estate agent and she believed they had a shared interest in passive house ideas. She thought their communications were as people with a common interest, not client and designer.”

The designer’s claim was dismissed, but the woman didn’t succeed in her counter-claim either.

“Although I have found that [the designer] was overly optimistic about the nature of the dealings with [the woman] and persistent with his emailing and texting, it is well below the nature and frequency that would be needed to render its conduct unconscionable,” Simmonds said.

“[The designer] was excited by the prospect of assisting [the woman] and actively looking for work. But as soon as [the woman] directed him to stop, he did.”

Hannah Bartlett is a Tauranga-based Open Justice reporter at NZME. She previously covered court and local government for the Nelson Mail, and before that was a radio reporter at Newstalk ZB.