Why I Spent $100k to Fight a $10k Small Claims Lawsuit
294 hours on a 116 hour project sucks, but my general rule is once the code is deployed, we&#x27;re not going to &quot;take it back&quot; over nonpayment. If you fail on your final payment we will ask politely and insistently that you remit it - and not work for you ever again if you don&#x27;t. But, IANAL, but I can see doing takebacks like this potentially putting you in real civil liability.<p>A real world equivalent would be like hiring an interior design company to redesign your retail store, and as you&#x27;re haggling over project sign-off &amp; final payment the interior designer decides to go into your store and personally yank down the redesigned stuff until you pay. You may argue with that metaphor&#x27;s precision, but I&#x27;d guess that&#x27;s exactly how it feels to the e-comm shop owner. It&#x27;s simply unprofessional and borderline vandalism which I could easily see a court ruling caused more damages than e.g. a 3 month late payment.<p>And as we see here, it&#x27;s a way of pouring gasoline on a fire - a fire Joel righteously wishes to assert he wasn&#x27;t at fault for, but damn what a waste of money and time. His lesson is, I was right and should have fought smarter, rather than seeing he really didn&#x27;t need to fight at all.