An electronics company is trying to take me to court, any ideas?

Hello,

I am the subject of legal proceedings from a UK electronics company who are accusing me of loosing the company money by leaving a project half-way through it.
(It was a Switch Mode Power Supply project).

Are there any bodies that I can go to for advice?

The situation is that I was working on the project, but could tell that the 4 graduates with whom I shared the office were not happy at me working there. I believe that this centred on the mechanical engineer who didn’t think I was up to the job. This mechanical guy is a “perfectionist”, a hard working guy, and I guess for some reason he figured I wasn’t up to making good enough electronics to go in his fixtures , so he tried to “hound” me out of the job..

One day we were in the office, and our boss got up (this boss was the one who employed me, and he wanted me to stay at the company) and said he would be gone for a while. Just after the boss left the office, the junior electronics engineer got up out of his place and came over to me and fixed me with a menacing stare. He just sat there glaring menacingly at me. As discussed, this shocked me a little, but it didn’t surprise me too much, because I already knew that these 4 guys were well against me.
Anyway, as he glared at me, I tried unsuccessfully to “soft soap” him and get him talking –to stop him glaring. For quite some time this did not work. As I tried to “soft soap” him, he occasionally looked over to the other 3 guys in the room and sniggered with them, then turning his head back to re-fix his menacing glare at me.
It was obvious that the guy who was glaring at me had the intimate support of the other three guys in the room. (in other words, the entire graduate workforce of this company were against me)

As he continued his menacing glare, I thought up a “trick” that would likely “snap” him out of his glaring. That is, I knew that these 4 guys wanted me out of the company, so, there and then, I hashed up a story that very soon I was due to be terminated from the company. The guy that was glaring at me then looked confused, and started asking me when I was getting terminated….i guess my story worked, because I had succeeded in snapping him out of his glaring. The guy that had been glaring then started asking me questions like why I had been employed in the first place etc etc…so I just answered his questions and then excused myself to go for lunch.

Anyway, after the glaring incident, it was very very obvious to me that these 4 guys wanted me out of the company, and were prepared to do stuff to me like subject me to these weird “glaring” incidents. This was, I believed, a big problem, because if they would stoop to that level, then they would probably also stoop to doing the one thing that I feared…that is, when the hardware phase of the project was to begin, they would be very likely to deliberately damage any hardware that I was working on. –After all, deliberately damaging a hardware contractor’s hardware is one excellent way to nullify them and “encourage” them to leave.

This was especially worrying to me because the lab at this company was a closed room , separate from the office. –In other words, there would be no bosses or supervisors in there to see what might be going on…..therefore, in this lab, these 4 guys would have a “free hand” to damage any hardware that I may be working on, and no one would see them. One thing was , they had already stooped to this low level by subjecting me to the above explained “glaring” incident. It wouldn’t be much of a sideways step to deliberately damage any hardware that I may be working on. This was my concern.

The “glaring” incident had taken place just after the boss had left the office, -they had obviously waited for the boss to leave the office –and since all the guys in there were supporting the guy doing the glaring, I therefore had no witnesses to say that it had even happened.
Another troubling point was that the aforementioned Mechanical Engineer is a very good friend of the guy who owns the company.
Worse still was that the guy who owns the company did not look keen on employing me when I was at the interview. It was the “boss” described above who had persuaded him to take me on, seemingly against the owner’s will.

Anyway, they are now taking me to court due to money which they say has been lost due to me leaving the company before the project was finished.

Any advice on organisations that i could approach for support and advice?

Unless you have (had) a clause in your contract to the effect that you could personally be held liable for such things I wouldn't worry. A 'glaring incident' would have no credance in a courtroom and if the company had genuine grievance against you they would have to follow the wriiten disciplinary procedure in your contract of employment.

If you left the company of your own choice it would normally sever any liability except in the special case where you may have signed a non disclosure agreement and it could be proven you had used the company's proprietary information to benefit another business.

Brian.

Unless explicitly stated in the adhesion contract an impediment for employeers to leave the job before a certain date, the company (namely, the project manager) is the one responsible for administrate that risk, and hire, relocate or even have trained another person to replace you. Once you receive a monthly/weekly salary, this means that you are not payed to do the job up to its end, but you're payed to work on the project during this time. I only regret that when you go through it, in a way you'll be loosing an indication reference for future job's recommendations.

Glaring was a confrontation tactic, not assault but short of it, in hopes you would do something that could be called assault. It's much better that you talked instead.

This question might matter. While employed, did you work solely on the smps, or on other projects too? That is, can you claim you contributed substantially for your pay?

I agree with post #2, your written contract with the company is what carries legal weight.

If the case were to come before a judge (or arbiter), I can only imagine him saying 'So let me get this straight. Five men can make a successful project, but 4 men cannot? What kind of slack business is this? Case dismissed.'