Must a law be broken for a court to hear the case? An agreement between a union and association has expired. Though it had been renewed for many years an impasse has been reached and lockouts have happened. The union has taken the association to court for negotiating in bad faith. They claim they want an opt out clause which allegedly would give them the choice as to when the agreement applies to them. Would such a contract be enforceable if one party gets to decide when it applies to them? Both sides claim the other is spreading disinformation which is destabilizing the industry and will cause work to go to other jurisdictions/countries. When do courts hear a case and issue orders? Is it only when a law is alleged to have been broken? Is it technically breaking a law to negotiate in bad faith? If a company is doing something to cause wide spread economic damage would a court order them to stop?
Short Answer Must a law be broken for a court to hear the case? Generally speaking a union or management group involved in a labor dispute has to allege that the other side did something that entitled them to some sort of relief under the applicable labor laws and any surviving provisions of the collective bargaining agreement of the parties. But an adjudicator can only extremely rarely impose the economic terms of a new collective bargaining agreement, and then generally only after the parties have been ordered to participate in mediation and failure to produce a collective bargaining agreement. The far more common resolution of a failure to reach a new collective bargaining agreement is to allow a strike or lockout to continue until an agreement is reached. But, in rare circumstances, typically when a strike is not permitted for public policy reasons, a third-party arbitrator can sometimes impose economic terms for a new collective bargaining agreement when efforts to negotiation new terms fail. This said, different subjects of labor disputes, and different kinds of employment (in industry or occupational type) are often handled differently from each other. Canada has at least twenty-one different labor boards or tribunals to handle different kinds of labor disputes, each with its own separate authorizing statute. Long Answer There Is More Than One Set Of Labor Laws In Canada Labor law is a somewhat tricky thing that doesn't always follow general principles of contract law. There is considerable statutory guidance in this area that is not present in ordinary contract law, and it isn't entirely one size fits all. In particular, the labor laws that apply to public sector unions are different from those that apply to private sector unions, and there are some industries and occupations that are regulated differently than others in the union-management relations area. For example, the actions that janitors at a private medical facility may legally take in a labor dispute are different from the actions that doctor-employees at a private medical facility may take, which are different again from the actions that military personnel in a government owned and run military hospital may take. Special rules and forums are also often implicated if the employer is in the midst of a bankruptcy. The main details regarding these categories of laws are discussed under the last heading of this answer. The exact extent of a labor board or tribunals' authority depends upon the nature of the dispute, whether the dispute is public sector or private sector, and if the dispute is in the private sector, whether it involves one of the 10% of so of private sector unionized employers that are governed by special federal laws that apply to critical or pervasively multi-province or international industries. There Are Several Main Kinds Of Union-Management Disagreements When a collective bargaining agreement is or was in place between a recognized union and an employer unit as defined under the applicable labor laws (which are not always defined in the same way in every union, with factories, for example, usually organized on a work place basis, but the movie industry, in contrast, usually organized on an industrywide basis), there are several of kinds of disputes that can arise. Disputes Over Future Contract Terms One kind of dispute is a dispute over what the economic terms of a future collective bargaining agreement. Usually, in the context of private sector employees that aren't subject to any special rules, the decision making authority will not impose particular economic terms on either side, although it might order the union and management to mediate their dispute with a labor law mediator selected in a method provided by the old collective bargaining agreement or by law. If a mediation order has been entered, there could conceivably be a violation of that mediation order arising from failing to negotiate in good faith, but failing to negotiate in good faith usually involves failing to listen to what the mediator and/or the other side has to say for a reasonable amount of time, or failing to present any opening offer in the negotiation that the other side could accept if it wanted to, or presenting an offer so absurd (e.g. a $1000 dollar an hour minimum wage of entry level janitors in 2022) that it amounts to not making an offer at all. But generally speaking, unless some special circumstances (e.g. public employees or critical essential employees of some kind defined by statute) are involved a court won't impose economic terms on either party and won't consider a mere failure to compromise meaningfully from an initial stance after hearing out the other side to constitute bad faith negotiation. The law applicable to collective bargaining in Canada (as of April 2008) is reviewed here. Unfair Labor Practice Disputes The other kind of dispute between a union and the management group that it is dealing with, is that one side or the other has engaged in something that is defined by law as an unfair labor practice. For example, in Canada (although the same conduct would usually be ignored by authorities in China or France) if union members kidnap the labor negotiators for the management team and detail them in a windowless room without access to the outside world, that would probably constitute an unfair labor practice by the union, while a management action to hire goons to intimate the union members, or informants to spy in the inner discussions of the union negotiators would probably constitute an unfair labor practice on the management side. Obviously, I've presented some very extreme examples, and the interplay of what does or does not constitute an unfair labor practice in light of the relevant statutes and case law is arcane to the point of being byzantine in practice, with lots of legal guidance and lots of room for lawyers for both sides to disagree over how to apply the law to the facts. Also, some of these disputes may be defined as criminal conduct to be handled by criminal prosecutors, rather than in the labor law context, or may be handled in parallel in both forums. The authority deciding the matter can consider allegations of unfair labor practices and impose sanctions or issue court orders accordingly, if there are. Disputes Over Contract Implementation There is also a third kind of dispute, over how a collective bargaining agreement that is in place should be implied in practice to incidents involving particular workers or to particular employer policies. For example, there might be a dispute over whether a particular employee was properly fired for good cause, or over whether a proposed fringe benefits plan is consistent with the collective bargaining agreements terms. These are frequently hired by an agreed panel of arbitrators that handles all of the disputes that arise over the term of a collective bargaining agreement. But this kind of dispute is really beyond the scope of the question. Disputes Between Union Members And Unions Over Union Operations Another kind of dispute sometimes handled in a labor law forum in accordance with union-management laws is a dispute that arises between one or more union members and their own union (e.g. a disputed election of union officers). See, e.g. here (reviewing the substantive law that applies, while largely glossing over the procedural side of these disputes). But this also appears to be beyond the scope of the question. Who Is Authorized To Resolve Or Address Particular Disputes? I have avoided using the term &quot;court&quot; in lieu of the &quot;authority deciding the question&quot; because I am not familiar enough with the procedural side of Canadian labor law to know who this authority is, and that is something that is likely to vary based upon the kind of employer involved, the nature of the dispute, and the stage of the process that the dispute adjudication process for the dispute has reached. At least in the first instance, these kinds of disputes are almost never handled by ordinary courts that handle non-union related civil or criminal matters, unless an unfair labor practices dispute simultaneously constitutes a criminal offense that is prosecuted like any other crime. There are at least twenty-one labor boards or tribunals in Canada. One for the federal public sector, one or more for national private sector essential industries at the federal level, one for all private and public sector workers in Quebec, and a respective public sector and private sector body in each of the other nine provinces. These boards or tribunals handle labor disputes in the first instance and possibly an initial review of a delegated hearing officer's decision, but at some point their decisions are appealable by some process to one or more provincial courts in the case of the at least nineteen provincial level labor boards or tribunals, and ultimately to the Canadian Supreme Court, and to one of more federal courts (and at a minimum ultimately to the Canadian Supreme Court) in the case of the two ore more federal labor boards or tribunals. It is also conceivable in at least some cases that the union and management could agree, either post-dispute, or in some cases even pre-dispute under the previous expired collective bargaining agreement, to have matters that they set forth as the subject-matter subject to this treatment, resolved by a panel of private arbitrators rather than the usual labor labor tribunals or boards. The particular forum that applies to a particular kind of labor law dispute in Canada doesn't really change, however, the basic sketchy outline of the substantive Canadian labor law described above that applies to whomever is the adjudicator between the union and management in a particular labor dispute. The article on collective bargain cited above states: In Canada collective bargaining is shaped by a tight statutory structure used to regulate almost every aspect of of the union-manangement relationship. Such legislation closely regulates the formation of the collective bargaining relationship, governs the conduct and timing of the bargaining process, places restrictions on economic conflict, and may, in some cases, mandate certain terms of the collective agreement. The legislation confers broad administrative powers on labour relations boards or tribunals, which play a major role in the application of the legislation (Carter 1995). Labour tribunals regulate both management and union activity and may restrain some forms of employer interference with union organizing and bargaining activity as well as the untimely use of economic sanctions by trade unions. Unlike the United States, the labour relations jurisdiction of the Canadian federal government is much more extensive than that of the state governments. Legislative authority in Canada is divided among eleven different jurisdictions, ten provincial and one federal. As a result of various court interpretations of the Canadian Consitution, the jurisdiction of the federal government has been restricted to undertakings falling within its specific legislative authority and to conduct falling within its criminal law power. Due to the constitutional division of legislative authority, most private sector employees in Canada fall under the jurisdiction of the labour laws of the province in which they work. Approximately 90% of private sector workers are provincially regulated.In addition to workers employed in manufacturing, mining (excluding uranium), forest products industries, construction, service industries, and local transportation, employees of provincial and local government are covered by provincial jurisdiction. Although the federal government’s labour relations jurisdiction covers a relatively small percentage of private sector employees, these include workers in a number of important areas of the economy including: interprovincial or international air, rail shipping and trucking operations; broadcasting, banks, uranium mines, and grain elevator operations. All federal public sector employees fall within federal jurisdiction but are covered by a different collective bargaining statute than federal private sector employees. The article then continues to explain that: In 1967, the Public Services Staff Relations Act (PSSRA) was passed, creating a new and distinctive collective bargaining structure for employees of the federal government and providing for arbitration or the conciliation/strike route as its final dispute resolution mechanism. The PSSRA granted collective bargaining rights to workers in federal departments, a number of federal agencies for which the Treasury Board is the designated employer, and a number of government agencies or separate employers who administer their own labour relations programs. Since the passage of this legislation, all provincial governments have given their public servants the right to collectively bargain, including the right to strike in some jurisdictions and arbitration in others. In Quebec, all workers, private, public and parapublic, come under the Quebec Labour Code. In Manitoba and Prince Edward Island, public servants are granted the right to collective bargaining through their respective civil service statutes. The remaining seven provinces have special public-sector labour relations statutes, which grant the right to collective bargaining. Since the middle of the 1970s, the public sector has become the most highly unionized segment of the Canadian economy. Collective bargaining has been extended to cover not only workers in the public sector employed by federal, provincial and municipal governments, but workers in the parapublic sector not directly employed by governments, but rather by organizations extensively supported by government funding—this includes teachers, health-care workers, police officers and firefighters. The evolution of the collective bargaining process, which now includes public sector workers in health care, education, government services, has affected not only the way public services are provided but has also contributed to higher levels of taxation and forced the re-definition of the meaning of public services. For example, in Quebec, publicly funded religious schools operated on something akin to U.S. voucher systems are subject to its labor laws which are more or less similar between private sector and public sector unions and are dealt with by a single tribunal with any distinctions between the two treating unions at these schools as public sector, rather than private sector unions.
Courts only decide disputes If the written contract says X but the parties agree they meant Y, then the court adopts Y. However, if the written contract says X but one party asserts Y and the other Z, the court takes the written contract as definitive. The parol evidence rule would prevent any evidence being introduced if X is unambiguous. Plaintiff presents contemporaneous evidence that the parties did not intend the Written Agreement to be integrated, even though the template they used contains the integration clause. The plaintiff can’t introduce that evidence in the first place unless there is some ambiguity to be resolved. If it’s plain on the face that integration (whatever that is) was intended then we’re done here counsel, move along. But what if at the same time that they signed the Written Agreement in question the parties signed another agreement covering some of the same subjects? If the documents don’t create a practical conflict then we’re in the same place as before. If they do then the court will try to resolve that within the written documents - a later document will usually prevail over an earlier one and a more detailed document over a more general one. Extrinsic evidence is almost always excluded. Or what if there is incontrovertible evidence that both parties subsequently and intentionally acted contrary to some term of the Written Agreement? That would suggest that the Written Agreement did not represent the Actual Agreement. No, that would constitute a waiver by one or both parties - you can choose not to enforce (waive) your rights under a contract. This can be one off or, if repeated often enough, a waiver for all future breaches. Alternatively, the parties are free to change the terms of their contract; maybe that’s what happened.
Because breaking the law is not breach of contract (Necessarily). Were you to use the model to 3D-print a gun and rob banks with it, without this clause, you have not broken the contract. That would mean that the provider could neither sue you for any damages the use of their model in your crime spree might have caused them, nor can they legally terminate the licence with you.
I am not a lawyer: If they sue you it will probably be for fraud, then the DA will investigate and can easily find out who you are. If they can prove that you signed the contract is another story. If the clause in the contract is valid yet another. Getting a lawyer might be wise, especially if your visa depends on a clean legal record. Have you talked to them yet? If you can afford it, you or your new company could pay off he months salary to the old company. In my opinion it's fair, they probably turned down a lot of other applicants an will either need to search again or find a good temp to replace you. Think there was something that you cannot quit a contract before it starts, but another option would be to start working for them and then realizing during the test period that it's a bad match. However, best lawyer up! Search for "Kündigung vor Beschäftigungsbeginn" (Cancellation before the start of employment) Quick google suggests that they might be right if they have it in the contract, but the lawyer will know for sure. Look for someone who does "Arbeitsrecht".
It sounds to me like the parties made proposals with an intent to draw them up and formalize them but didn't intend to form binding agreements. The first agreement sounds vague. The second was committed to writing, suggesting that the written deal was to be the real agreement, and not executed. In the last case, it doesn't appear that there was an agreement because there was no meeting of the minds on the essential term, which was the price. Going to court is expensive. It is expensive whether this is litigating underlying disputes or trying to enforce an alleged oral settlement that is disputed. Also, settlement discussions that don't result in a resolution are not admissible as evidence in court. Making a deal would be nice, but Dave's concept of what constitutes a deal seems to be out of touch with reality.
Yes Yes Yes However, these are pretty standard contract terms. Many, many terms survive the end of the substantive agreement. For example, terms with respect to ongoing confidentiality, dispute resolution, warranties, termination itself etc. The second is so common it actually has a named legal doctrine: reading down. In the absence of such a clause, if the contract inadvertently exceeds what the law allows, it preserves the contract rather than leaving both parties without contractural protection.
This depends on your employment agreement, if any, with the organization, and on the company's contract with the organization. You can quit your job with the organization, giving whatever notice your contract provides. The company can end its contract on whatever terms that contract permits. Most service contracts specify a fixed term, with renewal possible or in some cases automatic if notice to end the contract is not given by some specified date before the renewal date. But many other arrangements are possible. If no term is specified in the contract, and there is no provision for how much notice is required, then the company should give "reasonable" notice, which will probably be in line with the norms and customs of the industry involved in the relevant country. The specific law of that country may or may not provide a required minimum notice period. The contract between the company and the organization might provide that they would not hire any employees or recent ex-employees of the organization without consent for some period, perhaps a year. If there is such a provision it must be complied with unless it is not enforceable under the law of the jurisdiction. Different jurisdictions have very different attitudes toward such contract provisions. If such a provision were violated, and it was enforceable in the jurisdiction, the company would be liable for damages if the organization choose to enforce its contract. The contract between you and the organization might include a provision that you not leave to become employed (within some time limit) by one of the organization's customers, or perhaps by one you had worked with. If there is such a provision, it might or might not be enforceable in your jurisdiction. If it is enforceable, you must comply or be liable for damages. Even if there are no contract provisions preventing such employment of you by the company, you must not without permission take with you and use for the company's benefit any confidential information that is the property of the organization and is not already known to the company through legitimate means. If you do, both you and the company might be liable for damages under trade secret law. In the absence of any enforceable contractual provisions, and if no confidential information is taken by you, there should be no legal problems. The moral issues I am in no position to offer an opinion on, and are off-topic here anyway. If you were to quit, and the company were to then seek to break its contract because, in your absence the organization could not provide proper service, and you were then to accept employment with they company, and if further the company had known of your plans, both you and the company might be liable for damages to the organization, depending non the details of the law in your jurisdiction. This could be a tort of "interference with a contractual relation" or something of the sort. You should be very careful in agreeing to any such procedure. If there is a question as to whether a provision of a contract between the organization and either you or the company in enforceable, or whether a provision prohibits you leaving the organization to be employed by the company, that would need to be addressed by a lawyer who knows this area of the law in your jurisdiction, and the specifics of the contract, or eventually by a court. It is out of scope for this forum. Nothing in this situation will be a problem if the organization agrees to whatever is done. All possible problems occur only if it does not agree, and claims to have a legal right to prevent it or seek damages.
Do I have any recourse for invalidating all or part of the contract? No. There is a presumption in contract law that when a contract is reduced to writing then what that writing says is what the parties agreed. Also, if you signed it, then you are legally stating: I read it, I understand it and I agree to it - don't sign things you don't understand. If your lawyer has produced something you don't understand then have them redraft it until you do. Would a successful suit against the lawyer for malpractice or negligence make any difference? No. A suit against you lawyer may get you damages from your lawyer but it will not affect the rights of third-parties. What is best practice for avoiding flawed contracts like this in the first place? Read and understand the contract. Educate yourself enough in the law so that you can do this. Your lawyer is there to give you professional advice; you are there to make your own decisions.