California  |  Business Law

While on vacation in Japan,I entered into a verbal agreement to supply labor and materials to do a remodel job for a client here in Japan, I went back to the US and e-mailed him a written proposal outlining the work to be done and the amount of funds I would need from him to purchase materials and ship by container fob port of Yokohama, I told him in the proposal and on our initial meeting when we had agreed to the project The amount of materials including shipping was $ 20,000 the total Job was $ 44,300 in Japanese Yen, I received into my company account the amount of

$ 20,000 which I then proceeded to purchase materials and load and ship container,One week before the container arrived in Yokohama he informed me that he would like a written contract which I produced underlining what I had written in my initial proposal, He disagreed with the conditions of the contract

and wrote his own changing many of the original conditions, ( ie that whatever

materials were left over from his Job that I would purchase them back at he original price, I informed him that as we had a existing agreement and that materials were part of this agreement they belonged to me after the work was completed.Everything is now at a stand still and he is demanding that I pay him back the $ 20.000 deposit on the Job. My question is is the verbal agreement valid and my next question is all of this was conducted by e-mail between him and myself I own a construction company in California ( Retired ) and he works for Morgan Stanley in Tokyo as a trader, all of the e-mails were sent using Morgan Stanleys equipment while he was supposed to be trading for the company during company hours and on company time.I realiese that suing him in Japan is worthless but my understanding is that Morgan Stanley can be held accountable for the actions of its employees, All of our transactions were held in the Us . Thank You for your help Mike Wallace