In: Civil Engineering
you are a client asked an architect to design a villa for yourself. You as a client didn’t ask for fees. The architect finished design and tried to collect the fees, and you were reasonable thinking that the fees will be around $3000. Since, this was paid for similar villa design of your friend. The architect argued that the fees should be $5000, discuss the possible action by judge if architect sued you and explain why?
The judgement will depend mainly on the agreement contract between costumer and the architect.
In the given case it seems that the costumer have not came in terms with the architect before the submission of final plan and the 3000$ was just an assumption of the costumer.
The architect have copyright and complete ownership of his drawings and specifications of his drawing until he sells it to someone. He/ she can decide it's price. Several court orders upholds architect the right to terminate a license to use its drawings and specifications.( Details of several cases are available in public domain )
The most possible judgement will be in the favour of the architect. The point of the costumer that, the plan of a villa of same size costs lesser amount will most probably will not help him in winning the case.
In most of the reals cases similar to this the judgement was in favour of the architect.