Morning all

ok - quite a long winded question.  Over a year ago I obtained a new client - the client was a news website.

I built the website around a word press template 'due to cost and time scale'.  An SLA was agreed as I had to monitor news and adverts that were added to the website on a weekly basis.

I was given a Google Analytics's tracking code to install.  I used a widget that was already installed within the template to drop the code within the website.

8 months later the client decided to take their business else were 'due to cost' so I transferred all the web files over to the new web company.

2 weeks later I received an email from the client stating that the new company had found that the Google analytic s code had been installed twice and subsequently tricked google into a mis leading bounce rates.  the client stated that all his sales jargon was based on a very good bounce rate 'which is very, very odd imho'.  He states that he will now loose business 'although from checking their Analytic s their visits and time on website has increased - which matter if you ask me'.  He is now demanding compensation from myself even though the new web company have informed him that his bounce rate is very healthy 39%'.  He also still owes me 2 month SLA.

I have never advised him how to sell his advertising.

Does he have any ground and how should I proceed? 

I'm sorry to hear about your problem.  It's too late to say "validate functionality" and ask for "written client sign-off" but it might help other people.  In this case validation would have been to log into the GA account and check it is recording and reporting as expected with some test traffic, probably before launch.

But if your client is really talking about bounce RATE, this may not have been affected by duplicate code.  Yes, the total numbers might be double, but the rate (as a percentage) might be unchanged.  You could try this with a a few test web pages and a trial GA account.

However, you did make a mistake.  Free legal advice is fine, but the detail will matter, and the cost of a lawyer might be more than the SLA value.  And employing a lawyer might upset the client further?  I'm not sure how the client can claim for future business losses.  Sounds like the client may be too expensive to maintain, whatever you did for them.  Perhaps suffer the 2 month loss, but get this agreed in writing, and accept it as experience.