Jeddah civil court denies SAR 600 menu-design deposit refund amid approval dispute

A civil court in Jeddah denied café owner Hanan Al-Sulami’s claim for return of a SAR 600 menu-design deposit, allowing designer Faisal Al-Harbi to retain it. Hanan sought only repayment of the deposit, with no additional damages.

The dispute turned on whether a positive response to a draft, followed by an instruction to wait, amounted to approval. The court did not definitively find that Hanan had approved the design. Instead, it concluded that she had not proved she stopped before approval—the condition their agreement required for a refund.

The accepted WhatsApp quote was the strongest independent evidence. It set the total design price at SAR 1,200, acknowledged the SAR 600 deposit and provided for repayment if Hanan stopped before approving the draft. After approval, the deposit would pay for design work. Neither party disputed those terms or the payment.

But the quote did not define approval, and the actual exchange about the draft was unavailable. The parties’ accounts could not establish the full context, precise wording or subject of the instruction to wait. Repeated copies of the quote proved the same contractual terms, not what the later messages meant.

The court considered Hanan’s account a reasonable basis to doubt approval, particularly because Faisal acknowledged her account of the subsequent instruction. Yet that did not establish whether the instruction qualified the earlier positive response. Faisal’s understanding was not independent proof either.

That uncertainty mattered because Hanan bore the burden of proving the refund condition. The court also rejected the argument that Faisal should have sought further confirmation: the recorded agreement contained no separate promise requiring him to do so, and the court could not add one.

Hanan argued that her instruction to wait followed her favourable comment and meant she had not authorised Faisal to finish. She maintained that he should have checked before proceeding and that the deposit therefore remained refundable.

Faisal said he understood her positive response as approval of the design. He acknowledged both her account of the instruction to wait and the absence of the full exchange. He sought to retain the deposit only if the message amounted to approval, accepting that otherwise the quote required repayment.

Hanan hired Faisal to design menus for her Jeddah café. After he sent a draft, she said it looked good but asked him to wait while she checked prices. Faisal treated the positive response as approval and said he completed the work that night. The next morning, she asked him to stop and return the deposit.

The judgment resolves the refund claim on the available evidence, not the definitive meaning of the unavailable messages. Its central distinction is between proving the agreed refund terms and proving that the event triggering repayment actually occurred.