Legal Question in Employment Law in Virginia
I am a massage therapist who was working for a private business in Roanoke VA. The owner wanted to expand his spa and did not know the proper course of action. He wanted to draw on my personal work experience and asked me to plan his new spa. I spent over 150 hours of my own free time at home designing, planning, and coordinating his new spa. When the construction was finished, I ordered all of his equipment, researched over 60 product lines until I found the right one that fit our budget, set up the spa, trained his employees on specific service procedures, and agreed to run his spa for him. When it came time to start paying me the agreed upon salary, he decided he didnt have the money to pay me and eliminated my position and told me that he coul no longer work with me.
What are my options for getting paid for my consultant work?
1 Answer from Attorneys
You need to clarify whether the "agreed upon salary" included this work at home
to design, plan, and coordinate all that was required to build this
new spa. If so, then you should sue this owner in the appropriate Virginia court
for your damages which should approximate what you were supposed
to have received in salary for this work at home.
However, even if there was no particular agreement for the work that you did
at home, you may still have a viable claim against this owner in what the law
refers to as "quantum meruit". If necessary, a local attorney should be
able to explain it to you.