Alternative question has anyone even been....

[blinko]

Sued by an agency ?

We hear alot of complaints about contractors going down the legal route with regards to agencies being naughty.....

Anyone been on the receiving end?

[NotAllThere]

I've had an agency try to sue my client over who introduced me to the client. It didn't get as far court, as my client's lawyers were considerably bigger than the agency's. I had a chat with the client's lawyer - ten minutes discussings the case, fifty minutes about how contracting worked.

The agency not only had severed the relationship with the client, but also failed to get any business with companies I worked in later as a hiring manager.

[GB9]

I had an agency withold a considerable sum on the basis that they felt I must have got the contract following the one they placed me for with one of the companies who supplied services to the end client while I was there and as a result, they felt I should pay them commission.

This was actually written into their contract so, e.g. say you worked for Asda and they had IT support from IBM. If you then got a contract with IBM the original agency's contract stated you must pay them commission as you had indirectly been introduced by them.

Needless to say, as soon as a solicitor got involved they backed down and handed over the money. It was a good learning curve though, as I found out a lot about contract law e.g. what actually happens invariably overides what the contract says. (see comment one thread about overtime being clawed back).