Therefore, and since this is a version that came up for the first time in the defendant's cross-examination and is not supported by anything, nor is it consistent with the correspondence that was presented, I am unable to accept the 'price quote' document as a true document that was transferred from the defendant to the plaintiffs.
- Moreover, according to the 'price quote' claimed by the defendant, the payment was supposed to be 30% upon confirmation of the order, 30% upon completion of production and before boarding the ship, 30% upon delivery and before the start of installation, and 10% after installation.
The problem is that according to the defendant's version, the system arrived in Israel in October 2021 without the plaintiffs being required to pay the alleged 'second payment', i.e., at the end of production and before boarding the ship.
As will be described below, this version of the defendant - that the alleged production was completed and the system was "on its way" to Israel - was repeated afterwards as well, and in none of the cases were the plaintiffs required to pay the same "second payment".
It should be noted that only after more than a year (!), and after a conflict developed between the parties and the lack of trust was explicitly stated - did the defendant suddenly demand that the plaintiffs pay the balance of the payment before the system was loaded onto the ship, on the grounds of lack of trust and not on the grounds that this was stipulated in that 'agreement'.
This matter also strengthens the conclusion that the defendant's claims in relation to the 'agreement' presented on his behalf should not be trusted, and this has implications for the defendants' claims as a whole.
- In any case, there is no dispute that an advance of ILS 35,000 was paid by the plaintiffs. At the same time, there is no dispute that no invoice or receipt was presented on behalf of the defendants in respect of this payment.
The correspondence between the parties regarding the supply - and the breach of the agreement
- The correspondence between the parties constitutes substantial evidence of the sequence of events and the defendant's various promises to supply the pergola at one time or another, when no evidence was found for any of his claims or promises.
- When the defendant was confronted with his various statements over the long months that passed from the date of the order until the filing of the lawsuit, he suddenly came up with new versions and explanations that had not been heard before - and he still did not present any reference to these claims.
- Below we will examine the main real-time announcements and the new explanations that were presented.
- On August 2, 2021, the defendant wrote that the pergola was supposed to go up to the ship on September 9, 2021. The parties continued to correspond after that date and the defendant repeated his promise that the pergola would arrive.
- On October 10, 2021, the defendant informed the plaintiffs that the system had arrived but had been damaged , and sent a picture of a broken wooden box with metal rods in it. According to the defendant, this is the box in which the parts of the pergola were transported, and it fell when the forklift took it out of the container at the port (pp. 18, 28-29).
In the correspondence, the defendant claimed that he was waiting to hear from the appraiser and that it "didn't look good"; he later wrote that the insurance company was causing him problems but that he had made a new order; and at the end of the month he announced that on November 21 it would be 'coming out again'.