Has anyone had a company to sue them? (Sorry this is a little long) - Laney

This is what happened.  I have done transcription for a local doctor for two years, no problems.  Well, apparently the office starting having money problems and the doctor called me in to ask me how I count the lines.  I told him that I have counting software based on 65 characters with spaces.  I have to keep a log that has patient name, how many lines and how much the report costs, and I turn in an invoice with that.

So, anyway, when I told him about the software and the 65 character lines, he said okay.  He is an ESL doctor, so I am not clear that he 100% knew what I was talking about, but he said he did.

So, a week or so goes by and he asks me to change my margins, make them wider.  Fine....that was done.  Another couple of days, he asks me to make my margins even wider.  I took a piece of paper to him and asked him to specify on the paper exactly where he wanted these margins and he basically wanted me to start on the very edge of one side of the page and go to the very edge of the other.  Looked really tacky, but hey, they are his documents, so I complied.

A day or two later, he called me AGAIN and showed me a report and it had like a couple of paragraphs that ended with three or four words on the line and he asked me if he was charged a full line for that partial line.  I told him AGAIN that it didn't matter how many words were physically on that line, that I had software that just counted 65 characters, incuding spaces, as his lines.  He said okay.

So, maybe a week or two goes by and he calls me in and says they are having money issues and he found and MTSO online that would only charge him 6 cpl and asked me if I could go from making 10 cpl to 6 cpl.  I told him no, that my job includes picking up, dropping off tapes, loading dictation cd into their computer to print out at the office, all of which I was't getting any extra for that time.  I find it hard to believe that a MTSO could charge only 6 cpl, I mean what are they paying their MTs, but anyway, I told him that MIGHT be his best bet to just go with them.  He got mad at me and we decided to part ways.

So, a couple of weeks later, doctor's wife calls me and tells me that I owe them money and she has not calcuated this out as of yet.  I asked her what she meant and she said they are counting my lines and I had lied on my invoices about the amount of lines that I had typed.  Sooooo, another trip down to the doctor's office to find out what she meant and they were again PHYSICALLY counting these lines and the partial lines, they would just take every partial line and call that one line and that is how they were counting.  I told her, just like I told him many times, that they were charged based on 65 characters including spaces.  She said they didn't agree to that, even though I had been doing this for two years and the previous transcriptionist before me did the same thing, she gave me the counting software that was provided to her by the doctor!!

So, I told them I wasn't paying them back, I didn't feel I was wrong and wifey said they will sue me.  I had a look at my contract and it just says 10 cpl.  It doesn't say how big or small that line is, whether it is counted by the characters or physical.  So, I realize I don't have my butt covered, but they don't have theirs covered either, right?  I mean it doesn't specify, so wouldn't that imply that since we had no agreement on HOW the lines were counted that they can't accuse me of wrongdoing?

TIA, sorry it's so long, I'm nervous though.