united-states international civil-law
Client demanding refund
<p>I'm a freelance programmer from Belgium and I have developed an application for an American client. We agreed on 800USD for the completed project. I finished the application and met all his requirements. We only had a verbal agreement about the project and we discussed payment dates for the project. I received 4 200USD payments over the course of two months, after which I sent him the completed product.</p>
<p>After I sent him the finished product everything seemed good. However after some days he said that it was unusable because switching between pages was &quot;too slow&quot;. He demanded a refund because he said that he was unable to use it. In my opinion it was fine and I didn't see what was wrong with it.</p>
<p>Now he's threatening me with 'legal action' if I don't refund him the full amount, but legally speaking what can he actually do. Can he even sue me, since I'm 17 and live in a different country? And is it likely that he would be successful, since we never made any form of contract?</p>
<p>Any help is very appreciated, thanks!</p>

<p>Since you are 17 years old, any contract that you sign is according to US law voidable by you or your guardian until some time after you are 18.</p>
<p>So if he tries to sue you, you can just void the contract and he has no leg to stand on. The money he paid you is just bad luck for him. He won’t have any copyright or license to use your code in that case.</p>
<p>BTW. You have a verbal contract which is quite valid. With no other evidence, any court would assume that the contract was that you delivered what you delivered, that he has a license to use the code, and he paid the money that he paid. If you void the contract, he has nothing.</p>
