Case Type: Commercial dispute / Information technologies

Client: Quebec SME in the distribution sector

Parties Involved: Client vs. IT provider (custom software development)

Mandate Assigned to H2E Firm:

Assess whether the delivered software met the contractual commitments

Duration of Mandate: 2 weeks

Context

An SME hired an IT firm to develop internal management software (orders, inventory, invoicing).

After more than a year of development, the client company considered the project incomplete, unstable, and unusable—despite having made several payments.

A commercial dispute arose, with over $200,000 at stake. The SME’s lawyer hired H2E Firm to audit the source code quality, evaluate the deliverables, and verify compliance with the signed contract.

H2E Firm’s Intervention

Step 1

Contract and Specifications Review

  • Full review of the agreement signed between both parties
  • Identification of promised features, timelines, and required standards
  • Creation of a correspondence table between expected and actual deliverables
Step 2

Source Code Audit

  • Static analysis of the provided code
(over 30,000 lines)
  • Assessment of project structure, dependencies, and documentation
  • Review of development practices (testing, security, performance)
  • Measurement of technical debt: duplications, anomalies, cyclomatic complexity
Step 3

Structured Report Including

  • Executive summary for legal professionals
  • Detailed technical analysis
  • Evaluation grid of fulfilled vs. unfulfilled requirements
  • Screenshots, code excerpts, and quality indicators
  • Formulation of a technical opinion: the delivered product was incomplete and did not meet contractual obligations
Outcome

H2E Firm’s report was submitted as evidence
in the mediation between both parties.

Due to the strength of the findings, the IT firm agreed to refund 45% of the paid amounts and waived its claims for scope overages.

The client later assigned a new project to
another team—this time with technical clauses recommended by H2E.

Key Takeaways
  • Technical clauses must be written clearly to be enforceable
  • A source code audit can reveal unusable or risky software due to poor structure
  • A neutral, independent, and competent expert can support a swift and fair resolution
Tools Used
  • SonarQube (software quality analysis)
  • Pylint, ESLint, PHPStan (depending on programming languages)
  • Visual Studio Code + forensic plugins
  • PDF report structured according to evidentiary standards

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