Good afternoon, commercial advice needed

[BTTFRS]

Good afternoon everyone. We are a small company who provided staff to be on a specific site 24 hours a day. Out of the blue we were told that our services were not needed. It turns out 5 of our staff created their own company then orchestrated problems leading to us being kicked off site whilst they took over the contract. Is this an illegal practice? (this is a brief outline) also, do clients have to sign your companies Terms and Conditions to make them legal? Our are on our website for all to see, is that binding enough?

[R0b]

Hi

The fact you have terms and conditions on your website does not automatically mean that those terms apply to the agreement you have with the customer. Most B2B arrangements would have a written contract in place specifying the terms and conditions that apply to the services you are providing. The onus would be on you to prove that when you contracted with the customer, you both agreed those are the terms that would apply.

As for your staff, do you not have an employment agreement which includes a non-solicitation or non-compete clause prohibiting them from snooping in and taking your customers? You could sue them for your losses if there was something in there to that effect.

[BTTFRS]

Alas, we have no signed restrictive covenants. I was more hoping to go down the defamation route.

[R0b]

Soliciting business is not a cause for defamation but even if there is a potential claim, does your company have deep pockets because that is what you will be needing if you go down that route, even more so if you lose as you will be liable to pay the other side's legal costs. It is not uncommon for costs alone to run into tens of thousands or higher.

You might want to consider other alternative legal remedies such as breach of contract.

[BTTFRS]

I had a feeling I couldn't do anything regarding the soliciting business, it was the way they went around it by damaging our good name. To be honest I think I'm going to have to chalk this up to experience and in future get everything signed. Thanks for your input.