Q: A landscaper is requesting payment for work they screwed up. What should I do?

A: This never happened. That is what a judge will tell you. To have an enforceable contract, you secure a bid/quote on SPECIFIC WORK, how it is to be done, when it is to be done, who is responsible for the work permits, what it will cost, and how long it is guaranteed.

You need to provide MANY more facts. Your best advice is to take all of the individual documents and ALL of your texts and emails for a conference with an attorney to ask if you have any recourse, on any of the work.

For example, if the tennis court is concrete and it was cracked, it probably wasn't laid properly or it's old and needs to be re-laid by breaking it up, hauling it away, and re-pouring it, perhaps thicker. Repairing cracked concrete is like painting a wood house that has peeled. The only legitimate guarantee on the paint is that it will peel again and the only legitimate guarantee on the concrete is that it will crack again.

You said they graded the yard. Is that what your document said? Grading a yard makes it level. That's what you got. If you wanted the yard to drain, that would require adding an incline and probably 100 tons of fine sand and dirt, and equipment and/or manpower. $15,000 seems fair. What made you think you could get that done for free?

It looks like you hired substandard labor, you waited 3 years to pay them, and now you want the sub-standard labor that probably had no insurance, pulled no work permits, and with whom you had no contracts to pay legitimate contractors. That is what a judge will deduce on your facts. Be careful about signing an hourly agreement with an attorney. This could take a great deal of time and you may not prevail. If the people you hired provided no references, were unlicensed, and had no insurance, you had no reasonable expectation of quality work. You failed to perform YOUR due diligence and that, alone could prevent you from winning.

In the best case scenario for you, a court may reduce the amount you owe the substandard labor (but that is unlikely given that you waited 3 years to pay them). NO COURT will make the handyman pay to have a professional contractor do the work.