Q&A: Going Down to Another Person’s Field and Planting It
Going Down to Another Person’s Field and Planting It
Question
Hello Rabbi,
Last week my neighbor’s water heater broke.
He called a plumber to replace it with a new heater.
The next day it turned out that he had replaced my heater instead of my neighbor’s.
It should be noted that my heater, while not new, was working perfectly.
Now he is demanding full payment from me for the heater.
My question is: according to Jewish law, am I obligated?
Thank you.
Answer
Who is demanding it? The neighbor? Clearly you do not have to pay full price. You can pay the difference in value (based on an expert appraisal), or tell him to take his heater and give you back yours.
Discussion on Answer
He threw my heater in the trash.
This is really becoming a joke. The mistake was his, so let him take the heater and return yours.
If he threw it out, that’s his problem.
Still, if you had already been planning to buy a new heater soon, then it would be a Sodom-like attitude to exploit the strict letter of the law and not pay him. In that case I would tell you to pay him the full price. After all, he suffered a loss because of a mistake he made in good faith. But if you had not been thinking of buying one, then you are not obligated to pay him the full price.
Something similar happened to me: a contractor (who builds fences made of a concrete frame with stones inside, not a cheap price per meter) fenced off one side more than we had agreed with him. But that was a side that my wife had wanted fenced from the outset, while I objected because of budget considerations. According to him, taking down the fence on that extra side was not worthwhile for him even if we paid him nothing.
Now, from my own perspective, I would have given him only a very small amount—what I myself would have been willing to pay for that additional fence after already having a big expense for the fence that we had both wanted. (It could be that at a later stage, meaning in a few years, I would indeed have ordered a fence for the other side too.)
But a rabbi I went to (and he emphasized to me, “I’m not a judge”) said that because my wife did want and still wants the fence, and in her opinion it is worth the money, I can’t ignore that. In the end we reached a compromise with the fencing contractor that he would get the cost of the materials and roughly half of the difference.
That is similar to what I wrote.
The plumber is demanding it from me.
In any case, thank you for the response.