Hey, look! Words!

[agilebrit]

I've just hit a thousand words in the cya_ficathon backup thing. And now it's time to tap into the hive-mind of my flist.

I assume that Angel, Wes, Lorne, and Gunn (at least for the purposes of this story) signed contracts with W&H. Enforceable in perpetuity. By the same token, neither Spike nor Illyria have.

Question: How the hell do I get them out of those contracts? Getting Lilah out as well would be a shiny bonus.

Comments

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

Being declared non compos mentis tends to get you out of legally binding contracts. Of course, this may create fresh problems.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

Well Gunn's a lawyer as long as he stays with W&H(!) - I'm sure he could come up with something along the lines of 'undue influence having been brought to bear'. Of course if W&H ceases to exist the contracts become null and void....

[sage-theory.livejournal.com]

Well, you can have some reason suddenly exist that WRH wants to let the guys out of their contract in exchange for something.

*or*

The whole thing with Connor could come into play. The deal was for Angel to take WRH in exchange for his son getting a brand new life and all. But since his son didn't get to enjoy that brand new life, it might get them out of the contract.

Especially if you argue that it was WRH's fault for letting Sahjhan run around and screw the pooch, when they knew full well that he was a threat.

Lilah probably has a way out for herself. I imagine she tucked something away to leverage against the senior partners in case of this very thing. Otherwise I think she probably would have been a little less stoic with Wesley when he tried to burn her contract the first time around.

[aadler]

If you have any lawyer (or law school) friends, they might be able to give you some technical advice. yahtzee63 did a story once in which Lindsay accepted a dollar to help a small legal firm do some manual labor, at which point — by working for another firm — he violated his employment with WRH and was therefore no longer an employee. I would assume that the “perpetuity” contract would be harder to break, but some similar loophole might suffice.

[texanfan.livejournal.com]

I don't recall there being onscreen mention of them signing a perpetuity clause. Since they were being "wooed" at the time and were still pretty antsy about the whole deal would they have signed such a clause? Would W&H have asked them to knowing it could be a deal breaker?

I like the Connor angle. What if each of them had some kind of tit for tat agreement that W&H breeched? No reason Angel had to be the only one with a secret.