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.
Alex / talexb / Toronto
Thanks PJ. We owe you so much. Groklaw -- RIP -- 2003 to 2013.
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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.
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In common-law countries there is a legal maxim "de minimis non curat lex" (loosely: "the law will not involve itself in trivia"). So they could sue, but the court would reject it. This makes the morality question irrelevant.
Immediate edit: in the specific case here, where the IT contractor would indemnify the agency, this would be for disputes between the manufacturer and the agency. So the scenario LanX is proposing is that the manufacturer would threaten to sue the agency for the contractor's haircut. Let's not forget that if the contractor has an agreement with the agency, a court would still adjudicate it, and common-law courts don't favour things that would "bring the law into disrepute", which this surely would.
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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.
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