'I agreed to take a contract, away from home, at short notice. After the first week I was told by the agency that the Client had terminated the contract. The Agency say the Client won't sign the timesheets, but I know this is untrue. They haven't paid me. The agency had mistakenly sent the contract to the wrong address, and I only got it after the contract had been terminated.'
Clearly, when you went to work, it must have been under the terms of some contract. You were allowed to start work. Neither Client nor Agency can have expected to get your services for nothing.
The first question is whether it was under the terms of the document the agency sent you and which you did not receive until after termination, or some other terms. If you had neither seen nor had the opportunity to see the document, and if that is a result of no fault of yours, then it is difficult to see how the contract terms could be those embodied in the document.
We therefore have to fall back on the terms that were apparently agreed orally - that your services would be provided by your company (whose name you gave them), and that you would work for the named client at the address you were given, for the agreed number of hours a week, and for the three weeks the contract was due to last; and that you would be paid at the agreed hourly rate. Those are the essential terms - who was going to do what, and what the payment basis was - and they're all we need. And it seems clear to me that there must have been mutual intent to create legal relations.
If any other terms were essential to make the contract work, then the law would imply them. This is a contract for services, and so the law will also imply a term that you would carry out the work with reasonable care and skill.
So yes, there was a contract; and no, the terms were not those in the document the agency sent to the wrong address through no fault of yours.
Did the agency have the right to terminate that contract prematurely, other than for breach? The contract was for an agreed period of three weeks, and no express right to terminate had been agreed. I see two possibilities - first, that neither party had the right to terminate; or alternatively, that each party had the right to terminate on reasonable notice. What would 'reasonable notice' have been? Probably a month - longer than the contract - so I think it most likely that the law would not imply any right for either party to terminate early, given the fact that the contract was only for three weeks.
Did the agency have the right to terminate early for breach on your part? To do this they would have to show that you were in breach of a material term of the contract. They would have to show that you had failed to perform the services with reasonable skill and care. From what you've told me, I doubt if they could show this.
Does it matter that they say the Client has not signed timesheets? Probably not. Timesheets are simply a means of evidencing that you have actually worked the hours you say you worked. They're not the only way of proving that. Your word on the point should be good enough, unless they can produce evidence to the contrary.
It therefore follows that you are entitled to be paid for the time you worked, at the agreed rate.
It also follows that unless the agency can show that they were entitled as a matter of law to terminate the contract prematurely (whether on grounds of breach, or of an implied term allowing early termination), then you will also be entitled to damages for the broken period of the contract. The amount of those damages would be such as to put you in the position in which you would have been, had the contract not been so terminated. You would have to show that you had made reasonable attempts to find other work during that period, and to give credit against your claim for anything you had earned elsewhere during that time.
If the agency won't pay and won't enter any reasoned discussion about the matter, then you will have to consider taking County Court proceedings, in order to try and bring the matter to a head. It's quite easy, just visit your local County Court, get the forms, fill them in, and return them to the Court with the fee. Or get a copy of Nick Moon's neat program to draft the summons for you - the demonstration version works and is free, and you'll find it on http://www.cix.co.uk/~greencheese/.
4th September 1998
I'd really appreciate your feedback on this FAQ - so mail me and tell me what you think of it, if it's been useful to you, or let me know of any specific problem you have where I may be able to help.
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