Recently, a high-tech company's construction engineering design contract dispute, represented by the senior partner of King&Capital Law Firm, Mr. Yang Hangsheng and Mr. Peng Qi, ended with the withdrawal of the other party's lawsuit. The other party filed a lawsuit on the grounds of “completing the design work but not being paid”, requesting our client to pay nearly 5 million RMB in design fees and liquidated damages for late payment. The combination of strategic defense and criminal indictment pressure in the trial finally prompted the other party to apply for dismissal of the lawsuit, realizing the successful outcome of the settlement of the lawsuit.

This case involves “abnormal human chapter”, the authenticity of the evidence, suspected of false litigation and other legal issues, Yang Hangsheng team of lawyers to civil defense and criminal charges combined with the composite litigation strategy, so that the client's legitimate rights and interests are protected to the greatest extent possible!

Case Background

In January 2025, a Shanghai architectural design company sued a high-tech company in a Shanghai court, claiming that the design service fee, late payment of liquidated damages and so on totaled nearly 5 million yuan, and submitted to the court “commissioned the design contract”, “design results of the signing of the receipt sheet”, “reminder” and other evidence to prove that the two sides have set up a commissioned contractual relationship, the architectural design company to complete the design work, but the high-tech company did not pay to the alleged facts of design service fee. The so-called facts that the design service fee was not paid by Hi-Tech.

In the documents provided by the plaintiff, the relevant signature on behalf of a high-tech company was that of its former director, L. All the documents were not stamped with the company's seal, and L, who had served as a director of a high-tech company and was not the company's legal representative, was removed from the position of director half a year ago.

Litigation Strategy

After accepting the assignment, the team analyzed the case and the legal relationships involved. In view of the special characteristics of this case, the team formulated litigation strategies in terms of elaborating the background of the project, determining the legal relationship, discovering contradictions in the evidence, and charging false lawsuits:

I. Explaining the background of the project and clarifying that the defendant did not have the necessity and right to enter into the contract on its own.

The commissioned design contract refers to the plant decoration project is promoted by the local investment promotion department of the open area, covering the whole process of design, procurement and construction (EPC project). In this context, a high-tech company as a resident enterprise, neither the actual contracting needs, nor external contracting authority.

After coordination, the project location of the relevant departments to the court issued a letter of proof.

Second, grasping the “someone without a chapter” case characteristics, around the actor's authority to analyze the legal consequences of layering

The commissioned design contract appeared in the case of “someone without a seal” abnormal situation, to determine whether the L external signing contract has the right of representation or agency. Entrusted design contract shows the signing point, L is only a director of the company, non-statutory representative or other executive positions, the signing of the act does not belong to the act of office; L in the signing of the contract and the so-called fulfillment of the process, did not obtain the authorization of the company, not entitled to act; from the perspective of whether it constitutes the perspective of apparent agency, in the case of the defendant is not aware of the denial of the situation, the plaintiff can not prove that the transaction of negotiation, agreed to reach the process of “good faith can not be proved,” “good faith can not be proved”. “Good faith can not be proved”, as a malicious counterparty, L's behavior obviously can not constitute the apparent agent.

This plate is the core of the civil defense, based on the presence or absence of representation and agency for the delicate analysis and reasoning, the defendant from the big picture has been basically invincible.

Third, the discovery of the other side of the evidence contradictions, reveal “suspected false litigation” risk

On the question of whether the two sides actually fulfill the commissioned design contract, the agency team from the review of the other party's evidence “design results sign-off sheet” to start, found that the delivery of the design results of the document there is a “time traversal” problem, part of the drawings and documents attributes show that the generation of time is later than the date of the “design results sign-off sheet” sign-off date, there is a suspicion of forgery after the fact.

Combined with the case characteristics of “someone without a chapter”, the team revealed to the court that the case is suspected of false litigation risk.

Fourth, the criminal charge pressure, become the plaintiff to withdraw the “last straw”.

Combining the aforementioned case and evidence materials, the agency team believed that the plaintiff and L were suspected of fabricating the facts of providing design services, forging contracts and deliverables, and other evidence materials, “creating something out of nothing”, which was suspected of constituting the crime of false litigation, and applied to the court for transferring the case to the public security authorities for handling.

Through the construction of a complete civil and criminal countermeasures system, the case was finally closed after the other party voluntarily withdrew the lawsuit.

Write in the end

Construction engineering design contract disputes often involve complex chains of evidence and specialized fact finding. The key to winning this case was that the agency team accurately analyzed the legal relationship, grasped the key issues of evidence, and supplemented with criminal charges to prompt the other party to withdraw the lawsuit, which minimized the client's litigation burden!

In addition, it also inspires the management of the enterprise: the company should balance the flexibility and principle, not only to give space for all kinds of personnel to give full play to their talents, but also to clarify the authority of the directors and supervisors through the company's articles of association and system, and to ensure that the “statutory” and “intentional”, “internal” and “legal” rules are followed in the practice. In practice, we should ensure the consistency between “statutory” and “intentional”, “internal” and “external”, so as to avoid the misconduct of individual personnel or people with malicious intent, which may bring significant losses to the company!