CLAIM FAILS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LI, Issue 69, 20 February 1931, Page 8

CLAIM FAILS.

ARCHITECT’S PLANS FOR HOTEL

WELLINGTON, Feb. 20. “It is well established that when an architect is instructed to prepare plans for a building and a certain sum is named as the limit of cost, and the plans prepared cannot be carried out for the sum named, he is not entitled to recover fees therefor.” This was the basis upon which Mr J. S. Barton, S.M., in tho Magistrate’s Court yesterday disallowed* a claim brought by Oscar Albert Jorgensen, architect, against John Grant in respect of the preparation of plans of a proposed hotel at Plimmerton. Plaintiff claimed £l5O, being his charge according to the recognised scale adopted by architects in New Zealand of 2£ per cent, on the estimated cost of the projected building. In the alternative, he claimed for the value of his work done (quantum meruit) on the plea that before matters had been brought to completion; he was stopped in his work by the defendant’s abandonment of tho idea of building. . ',, It was common ground, said the Magistrate, that when the defendant originally gave his instructions to the plaintiff he informed him that the limit of his expenditure on the building was to he from £IO,OOO to £12,000. In his evidence-in-ehief the plaintiff said : “Grant had said that his limit was from £IO,OOO to £12,000.” The defendant said that the plans submitted to him were for a building far too elaborate and expensive, and he said that it was for this reason that he primarily objected to them and. eventuallv abandoned the scheme. He brought evidence of competent witnesses whose opinion was that the buildings projected by the plaintiff’s plans would have cost about £20,000. This was not disputed by the plaintiff. The Magistrate said it was well established that when an architect was instructed to prepare plans for a building and a certain sum was named' as the limit of cost and the plans prepared could not be carried out for the sum named, he was not entitled to recover fees.