A woman was ordered to pay $1,000 to a Santa Monica businessman as a reimbursement for work that wasn’t done.
Judge Pro Tem Alan Freedman ruled that Janet Bates must pay her previous employer, Chip Myers of Mania Entertainment, $1,000 for failing to perform bookkeeping services for the company.
Myers sued for $4,500 because he had paid Bates a $1,000 a month for two months of work he said she didn’t complete. He was also seeking the cost of having to hire another book-keeping firm to correct his financial documents.
But Freedman found Bates had performed many of the functions she was supposed to, and Myers continued to pay her for them.
For that he reason, he said Bates should not be liable for the entire amount. He also said the firm would have had to hire a new book-keeping firm to replace Bates anyway, so that’s not a cost she should bare.
“Even though the work dropped off, you continued to pay her in full,” he said. “Even though it was likely in good faith that she would catch up on the work, I have a problem with that.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 27, 2003. Read the original PDF.