Short answer. Yes. When a client's delay entitles a contractor to compensation, the law does not simply hand over the full stipulated amount — it weighs that figure against what the contractor saved in expenses during the delay, or was able to earn by putting that same time and effort into different work.
What the law says
If, in the execution of the work, an act of the employer is required, and he incurs in delay or fails to perform the act, the contractor is entitled to a reasonable compensation. The amount of the compensation is computed, on the one hand, by the duration of the delay and the amount of the compensation stipulated, and on the other hand, by what the contractor has saved in expenses by reason of the delay or is able to earn by a different employment of his time and industry.
Civil Code, Article 1721 — Employer's Delay. Read the full provision →
A two-sided calculation, not a flat charge
The law is explicit that the compensation is not computed from one factor alone. On one side sit the duration of the delay and the amount of compensation the parties had stipulated — the baseline measure of what the contractor lost by being kept waiting. On the other side sits what the contractor saved in expenses because of the delay, or was able to earn by putting that time and industry into different work. Both sides feed into the same figure, which is why outside earnings during the delay period are not irrelevant to what the contractor can ultimately charge.
Why earnings elsewhere pull the amount down
The compensation exists to make the contractor whole for being made to wait on the client, not to hand over a windfall on top of whatever the contractor managed to earn in the meantime. If the delay freed up the contractor's time to take on other paying work, that income offsets part of the loss the delay would otherwise have caused. The result is a compensation figure that reflects what the contractor actually lost, net of what the same delay let the contractor gain elsewhere — not a fixed penalty charged regardless of how the contractor actually used the idle time.
Savings count too, not just outside income
The offset is not limited to money earned from other work. It also includes expenses the contractor did not have to incur precisely because the work was delayed — materials not yet purchased, labor not yet paid out, equipment not yet mobilized. Both strands, money earned elsewhere and money saved by not proceeding, are weighed against the stipulated compensation and the length of the delay to arrive at what is reasonable, rather than treating either side of the ledger in isolation.
When this rule applies in the first place
This compensation only comes into play where the work required some act from the client — providing access, materials, approvals, or instructions the contractor needed to proceed — and the client either delayed that act or failed to perform it at all. It is the client's own delay in doing something the contractor was depending on, not delay caused by the contractor or by outside circumstances, that triggers the entitlement to compensation this rule then measures using both sides of the calculation described above.