Employment Contract Oddity

[talexb]

A good friend of mine was up for a contract recently, and having passed the technical hurdles, he was sent the paperwork for the job (this was for a very large, well-known manufacturer, and was through a recruiting agency).

He read the contract, but had an issue with the part that said that in the event of a dispute between the agency and the manufacturer, he would be on the hook for all of the agency's legal fees. He communicated this to the agency, and their counter-offer was to suggest a full-time job instead.

That didn't happen (presumably because the two parties couldn't agree on a fee), so he was dropped from consideration.

I know about tilly's adventure, but .. being on the hook for someone else's legal fees? That's bizarre.

Has anyone else come across strangeness in employment contracts?

[LanX]

Which country? Canada?

This doesn't sound legal to me, but lawyers are very creative in some parts of the world...

[talexb]

Yeah, this is in Canada.

When he raised this issue, the recruiters baldly said, "Huh, no one's ever read that stuff before" (or they read it and ignored it). When someone complains that a lawyer 'sneaked something into the agreement', that sounds like it was something that was there, but the signatory didn't read the agreement before they signed. Or they hired a cheap lawyer.

[LanX]

I'm no expert in common law. There are law boards where you can ask stuff like that.

IMHO this isn't legal, because it makes you an eternal slave.

An employer could threaten to sue you for nonsense like your haircut or mouth smell without any financial risk.

That's immoral.

[etj]

This does sound a lot like blaming lawyers for things that their clients either did and shouldn't do, or didn't and should. In any case, it always pays to read through important agreements, because the starting point is that you will actually be bound by the terms, so it's a decent idea to know what they actually are.