I am a programmer and working together with a graphic designer we manage to create dynamic websites.

I am based in Germany so the person that normally find the work is the designer, based in UK. Payments were always made to the designer who would then pay me my share. Our relationship has always been informal, clients are fully aware that we both exist and I will very often communicate directly with the client regarding technical matters, but left the designer to do the business/customer relation bits.

We had already created a few sites for one specific company which was a fairly long standing client of the designer.

He was asked by this client to produce another quite large project. This project was 80% programming and 20% design & project management.
A quote was produced with a specification for the site and a timescale. Our individual fees were marked as Programming (ca 80%) and Design (ca 20%).

After negotiation a brief was agreed. And a deposit paid which I received

Then the changes started. Every meeting came more and more additions and changes to the specifications for the site.

I was getting angry with the designer as he was agreeing to these changes, which were mainly work for me, without asking for more money.

To cut a long story short -> 7 weeks into the project he had enough of been pig-in-the-middle and quit.

I have tried but as I wanted to be paid for all the extra work (strange notion that!) the client is not interested in dealing with me.

I am still owed, for work complete, around 20% of the fee.

As I sub-contractor I believe I have no claim against the client but the designer.

Would the designer have a case for expenses and costs to date (against the Client) because they continually changed the specifications therefore the contract?

I would be grateful for a synopsis of both of our positions.

Many thanks
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To advise on this would require looking at the contractual position including terms of business if held, emails and accounts of the relationship. Once the scope of your trading relationship had been established then advice could be given on the strength of your case. It sounds as though the primary contract is between the designer and the client but without seeing the evidence it is just suppposition.
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