Solicitor making veiled threats

Hi all

Thanks for your responses. I've contacted a solicitor. The advice I've been given is that the solicitor concerned would have to issue debt proceedings against me, but it would not be clear cut in any way, and that it would be a very messy one for him to win.

The fact that I worked for this individual for nearly 3 years means I could reasonably be considered a part-time employee rather than a contractor, means that the duty of care requirement is different, and it would essentially mean that the individual would be suing himself. That I was approached to do this and not the other way around is relevant too as I never made a claim to being an expert in the area I was working in.

The fact I'm not a property owner and don't have the amount of money in question lying around would mean the solicitor would basically be throwing good money after bad to get it off me.

All in all he said there's a very good chance if a summons was issued, I'd walk away unscathed, so I should just not reply to any texts or calls and wait to see what he does next.
 
Sunny said:
But again, what are you suing for? No theft. No fraud.
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Do you actually understand how Adsense works and the kinds of fraud that can carried out if you've got someone with access to an Adsense account as a player??? The fact that there is a 10k charge that the OP can't account for is like a bank teller or a check out person telling you that 10K has gone missing from their till, but it's nothing to do with them - it just magically happened all by itself!
 
Jim2007 said:
Do you actually understand how Adsense works and the kinds of fraud that can carried out if you've got someone with access to an Adsense account as a player??? The fact that there is a 10k charge that the OP can't account for is like a bank teller or a check out person telling you that 10K has gone missing from their till, but it's nothing to do with them - it just magically happened all by itself!
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It's AdWords, actually. Not AdSense. Two completely different products. You can't defraud someone by bringing paying customers to their website.
 
Jim2007 said:
Do you actually understand how Adsense works and the kinds of fraud that can carried out if you've got someone with access to an Adsense account as a player??? The fact that there is a 10k charge that the OP can't account for is like a bank teller or a check out person telling you that 10K has gone missing from their till, but it's nothing to do with them - it just magically happened all by itself!
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The bill was run up on Adwords. Not Adsense. Adwords is set up where there are daily limits or budgets in place so it shouldn't be possible to run up huge bills. If the solictor gave someone who a) wasn't an employee and b) wasn't a specialist contractor access to be able to change their limit or use expensive keywords without any controls in place, it is hard to see how the solicitor can sue saying that the OP breached their duty of care. The OP says he didn't change anything and maybe other people had access to the account. We don't know.

There are numerous examples of people running up huge bills on adwords because of technical issues or because people didn't know what they were doing. It doesn't mean fraud or any other illegal activity occured.

Also I don't get your comparison with a bank teller. Do you think a teller is allowed home every evening without accounting for the money in their drawer? A better comparison would be a bank manager getting their geeky friend who likes IT to come in and play around with their SWIFT system and then come back three months later asking about a few unauthorised payments that seem to have been made.

Anyway it seems like the OP got proper legal advice so hopefully that is that.
 
T McGibney said:
So?

Many people repeatedly engage the same plumbers, handymen, IT repairmen. It doesn't make them all employees of the householder or business who engages them.
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Employing a plumber etc is a contract for service, not a contract of service. Where there's any ambiguity the default position is that an engagement is a contract of service.
If you employ a child minder to work in your home on a casual basis over a number of years then they would be considered a casual employee, not a contractor. That's a closer analogy.
 
Purple said:
Employing a plumber etc is a contract for service, not a contract of service. Where there's any ambiguity the default position is that an engagement is a contract of service.
If you employ a child minder to work in your home on a casual basis over a number of years then they would be considered a casual employee, not a contractor. That's a closer analogy.
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Its not really. Childminding in the children's home is invariably an employment because the parent/employer dictates to the minder/employee where they work is to be done, and because such engagements tend to be exclusive in nature, eg nobody else's kids being minded concurrently.

The position with childminding outside the home is a lot less clear-cut.

In this case if the terms of the solicitor/OP agreement specified that all work must be done on the former's premises at fixed times specified by them, this would support the argument that it was an employment.

On the other hand if the agreement was that the work could be completed at any location and at variable dates and times to be chosen by the OP, with the OP free to take on other work concurrently, this would support the opposite conclusion.

Purple said:
Where there's any ambiguity the default position is that an engagement is a contract of service.
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This is clearly not correct, as a study of the burgeoning case law in this area will demonstrate. [broken link removed]
 
There are factors other than the location of the work to be taken into consideration in determining who is an employee or a contractor,

The continuous (2.5 years+) nature of the work
The fact I was expected to carry out the work myself i.e. I couldn't subcontract the work
Being paid by the hour
I was told what tasks and when to perform them
I worked only for him and my full time employer i.e. I didn't render services to the public
I didn't have any financial exposure to a business
I had no final say in how a business was run

The solicitor I contacted told me that the above would make a very strong case for categorising me as a casual or part-time employee
 
T McGibney said:
This is clearly not correct, as a study of the burgeoning case law in this area will demonstrate. [broken link removed]
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The case you linked to concerned a claim for redundancy payments for Vets who were self employed in private practice but were contracted as veterinary inspectors in a meat plant that was closing.
That's a world away from someone who is an employee in their day job working part-time/ casually for someone else.
 
Its still worth reading up on the case law, which is very interesting. The article I cited is a good starting point, as it lists & explains the key Irish cases to date.
 
T McGibney said:
Its still worth reading up on the case law, which is very interesting. The article I cited is a good starting point, as it lists & explains the key Irish cases to date.
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It is a good article and I agree it's not as clear cut as I implied.
 
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