Breach of Contract

Consider the true case of a photographer/videographer who specializes in shooting music videos. The videographer secured a contract through an agent to conceptualize and direct a video for a well-known music star and signed a second contract with a location company, allowing the shoot to take place in a stately old home in the countryside. The home belonged to a private party, who separately contracted with the location company.

The script called for a scene in which the musician takes a bath. On the day of the shoot, the videographer, the videographer’s agent, producer, and crew arrived to do a run-through before the music talent arrived. When running water for a bath in an upstairs bathroom, the crew discovered mud and bits of grass in the water coming from the spigot. They called and paid a plumber to clear the clogged pipes, and the plumber discovered that the pipes were corroded and rusted. When the tub drained, the water poured through the light fixtures and ceiling of the room beneath the bathroom.

With the bathtub unusable and the house now damaged, the shoot had to be postponed until a new location could be found. The videographer’s agent refused to pay the location fees, citing the condition of the home as a breach of contractual terms. The location company threatened a counter-suit for breach of contract based on the unpaid fees and further demanded that the videographer pay for the costs of repairing the home, claiming that the plumber hired by the crew had caused the damage to the pipes.

What do you think? Based on your understanding of contract law after reading the module content, who was guilty of breach of contract, if anyone? How could either or both parties have better honored their contracted terms? Did anyone else in this scenario potentially sue for breach of contract?