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Contracts

Q: Minor Liability

When our band appeared on TV, our parents had to approve the details as we are all 15. Once we reach 16, can we sign an agreement that we must all agree to perform, even if one of us does not approve of the contract?

A: The statutory regulations relating to employment of children apply only to those who are under school leaving age, which is 16. Since you are now all 15, that is why your parents had to approve your TV contract and will have had to sign the application for a local authority licence, allowing you to do the work, without which the TV company could not have engaged and paid you.

Once you are all 16, the statutory regulations no longer apply and a local authority licence will not be necessary. However, at common law a contract with a minor - a person under the age of 18 - although binding on the other party as an adult or corporation, is voidable at the option of the minor, with certain exceptions.

One exception is a contract of service on reasonable terms, which is presumed to be for the minor's benefit. In a court case in 1975 it was decided that the mere fact that members of a pop group were under the age of 18 did not, of itself, make contracts with their manager unenforceable by the manager. On the other hand, even a contract which by its nature would otherwise be binding on a minor, may be unenforceable against him if its particular terms are onerous or unreasonably prejudicial to his interests, depending on whether the prejudicial stipulations in the contract do or do not outweigh the general benefit which the contract is regarded as conferring upon him.

It follows that anyone engaging your band's services needs to take great care to ensure that the contract is reasonable and does not contain unfair or onerous conditions. If a minor enters into a contract, including a contract of service, which he wishes to repudiate on the ground that it contains unfair or duly onerous conditions, he must do so before reaching the age of 18 or within a reasonable time thereafter.

Yes, after you reach the age of 16 you can all enter into an agreement which, as you suggest, will bind all of you to agree to perform, even if one of you does not approve the contract of engagement. As between yourselves as a group, such a contract will constitute, in effect, a partnership agreement, whereunder decisions are taken by a simple majority vote or by whatever other reasonable method or requisite majority you all agree, provided it is reasonable. There have certainly been cases where minors have to some extent been held liable under a partnership agreement made during minority.

Of course, if such an agreement were to provide that decisions whether or not to enter into engagements for the band must be unanimous, then each member of the band would be able to apply an effective veto. It depends on the circumstances of each case and the contents of the agreement, whether such agreement will be regarded on balance as being for the minor's benefit.

Without seeing the contract in each case I cannot advise further as to its enforceability but only give you the general principles to be applied generally as above. Such a contract is unlikely to be regarded as enforceable, however, unless either all members of your band are treated equally, or any particular term applicable to one or some but not all of you can be justified by some special circumstance.

In view of the very thin dividing line between what is reasonable and beneficial and what is not, it is desirable that you should obtain legal advice on the form and content of any such contracts, although where you are contracting with an adult or corporation, your legal adviser might not be too concerned about any onerous terms, knowing that you will have an opportunity of repudiating them in due course and knowing that where such a third party contracts with a minor and the minor elects to enforce the contract, the third party is bound by it, even though the minor may not himself be liable.

There is also nothing to stop a parent or guardian or other adult entering into an agreement with a third party to pay compensation if a minor refuses to honour a contract with that third party, which is what a prudent third party is likely to require in such circumstances, if he can get it.

First published November 2003