My employer after they let me go wanted me sign a contract saying I absolve them and all their associates of everything from the begining of time. yes it actually said from the begining of time.
Yeah I go through all the contracts and paperwork and I am never wild about any of them but this is one of two types of things I refused to sign despite losing a fair sum with them. I totally get people signing them though as its a tough loss to deal with. There needs to be laws around reasonableness of contracts.
At least in the EU there are rules about contracts and how they need to be understandable. Companies are not allowed to just hire a lawyer who's going to latinize everything simply to make it as impenetrable as possible.
Of course lawyers still use 16 words where one would do but it results in documents that are more rambly than incomprehensible.
I had an employer (wrongfully) terminate me and they wanted me to sign a similar thing. I asked if I could just… not. My (very cool, forced to do this) manager said “absolutely.” I didn’t sign it. I applied for unemployment. Started getting free money.
They fought it. I had a conference call with a judge and that same manager. I was shaking. The judge asked “MANAGER, did you have any reason to suspect that Rai did the thing they’re accused of doing?”
“Nope.”
End of call.
Thank you for the year of playing TF2 for 40 hours a week, dope-ass manager.
So the begininig of time was the one part but it also had this paragraph that listed all associates and went on for awhile. It had things like all stock holders and the company is owned by a holding company so all associates they way they listed could conceivably be practically everyone. Anyone who through all of time owned any company stock that the holding company had or had owned it or since its the begining of time any predicessor of it. Lastly it did not limit the scope to my work at the company. I talked with a lawyer and it did technically have the capacity of disallowing lawsuits for anyone for any reason. Case in point is a doctor fucks up a surgery on my wife and it later comes out he was drunk but he owned stock in a company that was bought by the holding company.
That is not an NDA at all then! A very different contract and you are absolutely right to refuse signing it. The company is totally acting outside of a normal legal practice, worth suing.
oh im sorry. I did not mean to say its an nda like in the story just an effed up contract. It was what they wanted me to sign to get my severance. As I said second time I have had to leave the money on the table.