[consulting] Contract > Developer liable for bugs?

[Adam Mordecai]

I asked Aaron Welch, my business partner and legal expert on this  
stuff and this was his response:

NONONONONO nononono no. no. no. no. N.O.

Do not do this. That is totally fucked, no way, no how. No. you should  
always limit your liability to the amount of money paid to you for the  
work, allowing for additional liability or offering a warranty or  
saying that the product is suitable for any particular purpose is not  
acceptable. The client should bear the risks of operating the product  
for any particular purpose, not you for making it for them, to their  
specifications. If you sign this, you will be fucked. Get a lawyer. I  
am not a lawyer, but this would be totally not acceptable to us, it  
should not be to you unless you are being paid an absurd amount and  
you have a huge errors and omissions general liability insurance policy.

I'd be happy to share the contract we use, that specifically says the  
opposite of this.

-A
Adam Mordecai
Advomatic Partner
---------
AIM: AdamMordecai
Main: (303) 733-0215
Cell: (646) 625-9010
Fax: (213) 402-3541
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Advomatic
243 5th Ave, Suite 460
New York, NY 10016
http://www.advomatic.com




On Aug 6, 2008, at 8/6/08•4:06 , Morbus Iff wrote:


I've been writing software (for hire or otherwise) for ten years or so.

I've never run into an instance, or heard of a case where, once a piece
of software has been "shipped" or "finished", the developer of that
software is liable for Things That Go Wrong With It. (I'm exempting
trojans and viruses, etc. - assume legitimate software here).

Specifically, I've received a contract for a new job which states that I
(as the Consultant) would be financially liable for any bugs in my
created Drupal code. I balked that I'd never heard of such a thing
before and received a revised version which now reads like this:

   "The Consultant will also be responsible for any damage, loss or
   liability (whether criminal or civil) of or suffered by  the
   Company ... in connection with any act or omission of the
   Consultant ... In order to compensate for this, the Consultant
   agrees to resolve any issue with his code (and his code only)
   as it arises at no additional cost to the Company. Correcting
   the problem code is the limit of liability to which the
   Consultant will be held."

I'm still cautious about this - while the final two lines state that my
only liability is fixing bugs for free (which is perfectly fine with
me), the first line still contains scares like "civil" and "criminal
liability", "damage" and "loss". Being "responsible" for "loss" still
sounds like I'd pay money if "problem code" caused financial damage.

A few questions:

  * has anyone else seen something like this?

  * has anyone else /agreed/ to something like this?

  * are my worries about financial responsibility accurate?

  * how should I respond to this?

-- 
Morbus Iff ( and think about the bad things that I didn't do )
Technical: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/779
Enjoy: http://www.disobey.com/ and http://www.videounderbelly.com/
aim: akaMorbus / skype: morbusiff / icq: 2927491 / jabber.org: morbus
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