APPENDIX A DECISIONS FOR REFERENCE It is believed that the original text of the decisions in a number of leading cases dealing generally with the duties, rights and liabilities of the architect, owner and contractor, especially the former, will be found of interest. The cases following are cited in the text, but a reading of the decisions in their original form and substantial entirety will be helpful, as supplementing and emphasizing the points already made and in connection with which they have been cited. The decisions selected deal with the general duties of and relationship between the architect, owner and builder, the degree of performance and character of work required of the contractor, the extent of the authority of the architect as agent of the owner, the effect of provisions for superintendence and approval by the architect, the liability of the architect for damage resulting from his negligence, the right of the architect to compensation, the measure of his compensation and his rights as a lienor. COOMBS v. BEEDE, (89 Me., 187; 36 Atlantic Reporter, 104.) PETERS, C. J.-It is not questioned that the plaintiff, a professional architect, was employed by the defendant to prepare plans and specifications for a house which the defendant intended to have built for himself in the city of Lewiston. On the trial of this action, brought by the plaintiff to recover compensation for services rendered by him in such employment, the defendant sought to establish that, although certain services were rendered by the plaintiff, such services were not beneficial to him, for the reason that they were performed in a manner contrary to his express direction and wishes. In an examination of the merits of the controversy between these parties, we must bear in mind that the plaintiff was not a contractor who had entered into an agreement to construct a house for the defendant, but was merely an agent of the defendant to assist him in building one. The responsibility resting on an architect is essentially the same as that which rests upon the lawyer to his client, or upon the physician to his patient, or which rests upon any one to another where such person pretends to possess some skill and ability in some special employment, and offers his services to the public on account of his fitness to act in the line of business for which he may be employed. The undertaking of an architect implies that he possesses skill and ability, including taste, sufficient to enable him to perform the required services at least ordinarily and reasonably well; and that he will exercise and apply, in the given case, his skill and ability, his judgment and taste, reasonably and without neglect. But the undertaking does not imply or warrant a satisfactory result. It will be enough that any failure shall not be by the fault of the architect. There is no implied promise that miscalculations may not occur. An error of judgment is not necessarily evidence of a want of skill or care, for mistakes and miscalculations are incident to all the business of life. In a case at nisi prius in one of our counties, where a controversy arose very similar to the present, the defendant there contending that the plans called for a |