Liability of payment if leaving an employer

I was on L1 visa and I got my new H1b visa sponsored through a contracting company this year. After my application was accepted in lottery, this company asked me to sign an employment agreement that mentioned I am liable to pay them $15000 if I leave them within one year.
This was not mentioned to me earlier and I had no option as they said they will get my application revoked. I signed the agreement after my visa was approved, sometime in early June.

i worked for them for 2.5 months and then left for another company in mid December as I didn’t want to have an association with them.
Now they have sent me a mail through their lawyer asking me to refund that amount.

Am I liable to pay them?

You had your answer in your very own question.

  1. You are on L1. They have filed your H1 petition upon your agreement to get a new H1 filed by them for you.

  2. They have asked you to sign a $15K liability to have them to employ you on H1(after H1 approval). You have signed and joined(in other words, you have agreed to pay $15K if you leave them before one yaer).

  3. By knowing the above fact, you have left them with in 2.5 months.

Now, how you are expecting to avoid the $15K liability? By law?? Do you think that the consulting company is blind by the law when they had you to execute the agreement? They know what way that you can be make liable.

Do you think that they are doing business to use them as catalyst by the people like you just to get ove the initial H1 hurdle and fly away with your own wings and they do chase the flys around?

Since there is an agreement that was signed by you, you MUST do either work for one year or pay $15K. If you file a legal case, you are going to trouble yourself deeper. 1) If you win, you are the king and they are the losers(this case would not occure, I bet). 2) If you lose, you MAY end up in paying the interest, penalties (for breaching the cotract), their and your legal expenses, even there is a slight possiblity that your immigration records gets dirty too to impact your future immigration proceedings.

Here is my suggestion: Take a step back, relax, get a copy of the agreement(or any other paperwork) that you have signed. Question yourself in each condition whether does such condition make sense for you or not. Check each condition that doesnt make sesne or you dont know about it. Go and meet a lawyer(its not free, you need to pay legal fee for the attorney), present your question from the check marks that you made. Take the attoreny advice and proceed.

Other option is: Talk to your H1 filer, try to strike a deal and get settled and take a lesson out of it.

You dont like my answer? Downgrade my answer and add the next lesson to the list of lessons out of the above case to you :slight_smile:

Thanks for your response.
If I had known from the beginning before they were filing H1 petition, I could have taken an informed decision. The point is that they made me sign this after the lottery process when I had no choice. Shouldnt that go against them?

Before filing H1, they made me sign another agreement that didnt have any penalty details.

Do you think I used them or they used me?

Point one: Regardless of either they made you to sign or you signed by yourself, the agreement is valid(unless and otherwise you are medically incapacitated or your age is less than 16 years- minor) at the time of agreement. Its a legally binding document between you two parties.
Point two: Since they have filed your petition, they have placed you in the project, they have been paying the salary(minimum is the LCA wages), they are legally correct(if they didnt pay you as per the LCA, they can be prosecuted legally). We also needs to have a courtesy to work for them for a reasonable period of time.
Final point: From what you have described your case above, you may need to settle with them by talking to them. If they go to court, you may be in trouble.