Legal Question in Business Law in California

Need more info, but probably not. Your contract is an asset of the gym, the new owner likely purchased that asset, and relied on the value of the continuing income stream from your contract when determining the purchase price.

You have no idea if your contract is with a new owner or not. If your contract was with a partnership, LLC or corporation, the ownership of the business entity may have changed hands, but the entity and you still have the same contract. Name change? I can go in and legally change my name, but my contracts with my clients don't go poof, do they? The only way I see that you get out of your contract legally is MAYBE if the transaction was a sale of assets. If the business entity you contracted with went out of business and sold the location or lease, equipment and contracts to another business entity, either pre-existing or created to buy the assets, then you may have an argument that your contract is not assignable, but without knowing the details of the business transaction AND your contract, there is no way to tell.

Assuming the big gym company sold off a few locations to a new owner, the question will be whether your contract can be assigned and the gym's obligations to you delegated. You should look at the fine print of your contract to see what it says, if anything, about the right of the original gym company to assign the contract and/or delegate its performance. In general, rights and duties in business contracts can be assigned and delegated, and this surprises some people, but it makes mergers and acquisitions possible. A large company could never be boought or merged if all of its thousands of contracts with landlords, labor unions, customers, suppliers and others had to be renegotiated.

It's often said that contracts can be assigned unless the effect of the assignment is to give the other party something significantly different or inferior. Here's an example sometimes given in law school: If X contracts with ABC Painting Co. to paint his house, ABC can assign the contract to DEF Painting Co. if ABC gets too busy, assuming DEF is duly licensed, etc. However, if X contracts with Picasso to paint his portrait, Picasso cannot assign the contract to his pupil, or even to Gaugin or van Gogh, because the pupil would produce inferior work and the other famous painters work would be inherently different.

It could be argued that in contracting with Big Gym you expected services with unique qualities, and therefore the contract cannot be assigned - and there is some chance you might win -- but if the contract itself gives Big Gym an express right to assign the contract to New Gym, you're out of luck from the start.