nottinghamtiger wrote:Not quite.
Both clubs, through the RFL and RFU, are affiliated to the Court if Arbitration for Sport (ironically acronymised to CAS). It is this affiliation that stops sporting clubs from different countries and sports stealing each other's contracted players. If Castleford lodge a complaint with CAS a they can instruct the RFU not to register Solomona and prevent him registering for any other affiliated club.

From the employment point of view, Castleford would need to prove at an employment tribunal that:
a) Solomona is in breach of contract; and
b) Castleford have suffered a financial loss.
The first part of this should be quite straightforward on many counts. He hasn't turned up for work as stated in his contract. He's also posted images of himself seemingly in another workplace.
The second part of this is more difficult. However, given that Castleford have received three offers for Solomona, this goes some way to showing the extent of the financial loss the club has suffered if these are presented as evidence to an ET.

Unfortunately for Solomona, if he is found to be in breach of contract and the ET makes a judgement on financial loss, Denny Solomona is personally responsible for compensating Castleford to this amount. He might even be liable for Castleford's legal costs. My gut feeling is that he hasn't thought this through far enough to understand the consequences he could suffer if Castleford are determined enough to go after him.

I also question how determined Sale will be in this case. He's already a gamble on the playing front and not an established RU player. Are they willing to pay the necessary legal fees to represent him defending an ET claim, the legal fees to have representation at the CAS and his salary, given the possibility they may be prevented from registering him? If that financial outlay really worth it for a winger who has never played their game? If I were in Sale's shoes, I'd be thinking about walking away from Solomona.

bentleberry wrote:Solomona won't lose out on this, either Sale will pick up whatever tab is decided on, or they will drop their interest in him. If they do drop interest in him then his two options will be to either; return to Cas and serve out his suspension (which I suspect will be on full wage), or retire from RL which is a perfectly legal way for him to break a contract as Cas could hold on to his registration. The best that Cas can hope for is that Sale will pay his wages to them for the remainder of his contract (£80k-ish) as that will be the only value that they can actually place on him. Cas can't sack him as he will be a free agent so they either have to cut their losses and hope they get something for him, or they are stuck with a player who they will have to pay who will show little interest in getting selected to play. If they do suspend him without pay, and it doesn't say that they can do that specifically in his contract, then he would be able to take Cas to an Employment Tribunal for illegally withholding wages

nottinghamtiger wrote:Not if Castleford can show Solomona committed a repudiatiory breach, in which case they are entitled to dismiss him AND claim for financial loss.
Solomona may well lose out. He could face being taken to ET by Castleford and suffer a significant financial cost.
He is playing a dangerous game.
His value is not the remainder of his contract. His value will be reflected in the offers Castleford received and declined from Warrington, Gloucester and Sale.

Magic Superbeetle wrote:But his value isn't reflected by those offers, precisely because Castleford rejected them, which means a court settling a breach of contract can consider them null. Assuming his contract has no buy out clause, the only value the matters is the value of the contract.

Good luck trying to prove repudiatory damage, the only winners there are lawyers.

Sadly I can only see Cas losing out on the big offers they had for Solomona, for a middle of the road sum being "paid" by Solomona (which will be paid as a part of his new contract with Sale).

nottinghamtiger wrote:Perhaps. Although it could be argued that as Castleford declined these offers, Solomona's value is actually higher!
If what is rumoured is true, it's suggests Solomona has committed the repudiatory breach. As such, Castleford are entitled to dismiss him but still make a claim against him for breach of contract leading to financial loss. As you say though, it's expensive for both the claimant (Castleford) and also the respondent (Solomona).
Like you, I can see the clubs agreeing to a outcome which sees Castleford receiving a decent but not astronomical fee.

Magic Superbeetle wrote:The problem with both respects of the claim by Castleford is that it's not the courts responsibility to value the player/ damages. Castleford can put whatever value they want on the player, but they can't prove it because they don't have any bidders at that price! As such, it reverts back to the contract value.

Similarly, my first thought on how to quantify reputational damage would be through season ticket sales - but there's no like for like comparison. The signing of Hardaker, the retirement of Dorn, etc will all affect that, so I doubt a court would take that as evidence. All roads lead back to the contract value of the breach.

It's a sad situation, and there's unlikely to be any real winners in it. The biggest danger of reputational damage would be Castlefords decision to take it to court as it would hit their ability to recruit (I'd imagine.) Hopefully it can be resolved before it gets to that.

The Devil's Advocate wrote:Followed by endless speculation as to how much it was & various posters claiming to know the gospel truth.