I'll Never Do THAT Again!

I subcontracted a part of an assignment to an individual market researcher to conduct personal interviews with C-Level executives. The project consisted of five phases to be conducted over a four month period. The first two phases included conducting interviews and the researcher was contracted to work on one phase with the potential for additional work on another phase, depending on the client’s decision.

The researcher signed my formal subcontract agreement which included provisions stating that all of the subcontractor’s work products belonged to my company; the subcontractor would not publish any notice, press release, etc, claiming the client’s name as his own client; the subcontractor would not seek direct employment with the client or compete with my company for a period of one year on similar projects.

The researcher did in fact contact the client without my knowledge and proposed to the client that he would do the same work for a later research phase of the project for less money. The client hired the researcher directly and my company was not asked to continue other phases of the project.

Which of the following would you choose to do? Please tell us how you would handle this situation in the comment section below.

1. Bring a lawsuit against the subcontractor since he breached the contract.

2. Contact the client and explain the contractual agreement I had with the subcontractor prohibited him from seeking work on his own related to the current project.

3. Do nothing since the client went along with hiring the researcher.

4. Other? Write in your action____________