Recently, the first-instance judgment of the entrustment contract dispute between Shanghai Yihai Film and Television Culture Communication Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Yihai Culture) and Cai Xukun was made public. According to the Judgment Documents Network, the court found that Cai Xukun did not breach of contract by maliciously, and Cai Xukun was sentenced to pay the 3 million liquidated damages for the owner before he was sentenced to pay.
It is worth noting that the time of publication of this document has been nearly 9 months since the time of the judgment. Yihai Culture appealed to the Shanghai Second Intermediate People’s Court after the first instance judgment.
Cai Xukun was sentenced to 3 million yuan in compensation in the first instance. The court determined that he was not a malicious breach of contract. The document showed that the plaintiff Yihai Company claimed that in November 2015, he signed a contract with the defendant Cai Xukun, stipulating that the plaintiff was the defendant’s exclusive plenipotent broker, and the contract term was until April 2023. The contract stipulates that if the defendant proposes to terminate the contract, every year the plaintiff will have to pay the plaintiff an early termination compensation of 3 million yuan per year.
In June 2016, the plaintiff and the defendant signed a supplementary contract. If the defendant unilaterally proposes to terminate the contract, every year the termination of the contract must be paid to the plaintiff RMB 30 million per year.
February 2017, KomiksThe defendant sent a notice of termination of the contract to the plaintiff and filed a lawsuit with the court, demanding the termination of the contract and supplementary agreement signed by the two parties. Therefore, the plaintiff sued it to the lawThe court requested that the defendant be ordered to pay the plaintiff RMB 30 million in termination compensation and RMB 150 million in liquidated damages.
Defendant Cai Xukun argued that the contract stipulates that the defendant unilaterally proposed that the compensation needed to be paid to the plaintiff should be paid to the plaintiff if the plaintiff paid a lot of energy and costs to train the defendant. In fact, the plaintiff did not make effective investment in the training and promotion of the defendant. During the contract period, the defendant did not obtain any remuneration paid by the plaintiff, and the plaintiff’s claim had no basis. In addition, the amount of compensation raised by the plaintiff is obviously inflated.
The first instance court held that the part of the 15 million breach of contract loss was an agreement between the plaintiff and the defendant during the termination dispute trial. The resulting termination compensation was caused by the plaintiff who should pay attention to but did not pay attention to the risk that the cooperation agreement might face the risk that the cooperation agreement could not be performed. The defendant is now required to bear the insufficient basis for termination losses.
About the termination compensation department, the defendant was underage when the contract and supplementary contracts of both parties were signed, and the plaintiff and the defendant’s mother Xu signed it. The defendant has not yet formed a clear plan and estimate of his future development and achievements. The long performance period of the two contracts is actually not conducive to the defendant’s own development and the creation of a stable, healthy and orderly environment in the performance industry. The uncertainty of achieving commercial returns has also increased accordingly. Therefore, the defendant terminated the contract early, which is reasonable, not a malicious breach of contract. The agreement between the plaintiff and the defendant in the contract stipulates a high amount of termination compensation, which does not comply with the principle of fairness and reason.
Finally, the court determined at its discretion to terminate the contract compensation of 3 million yuan based on the plaintiff’s publicity investment made in the defendant, the defendant’s income standards Cinema and the performance period.
The judgment date shown in the above judgment document is August 10, 2022. The document shows that if you are not convinced of this judgment, you may submit an appeal to this court within fifteen days from the date of delivery of the judgment, and submit a copy based on the number of the other party or representatives, and appeal to Shanghai SecondIntermediate People’s Court.
According to Qichacha, Yihai Culture appealed to the Shanghai Second Intermediate People’s Court after the first instance, and the court issued several trial announcements.
The dispute between the two parties has been around for a long time. Cai Xukun is still underage. According to the Securities Times, the termination dispute between Cai Xukun and his former boss Yihai Culture can be traced back to 2015.
In 2015, Cai Xukun signed a contract with Haoyang Media (Hunan) Co., Ltd. for participating in the “Star Moving Asia”. During the recording of the program, due to the transfer of the program producer, Cai Xukun was told to transfer the contract Cinema, otherwise he would not be able to continue participating in the program. In order to continue to complete the program recording, Cai Xukun signed a brokerage contract with Yihai Culture on November 17, 2015, when Cai Xukun was 17 years old.
After the contract was signed, the two parties signed a supplementary contract in June 2016 and modified Cai Xukun’s termination compensation. If Cai Xukun’s unilateral termination compensation was changed from 8 million yuan to 80 million yuan, and Cinema was terminated in advance. href=”https://comicmov.com/”>Cinema‘s compensation is changed from RMB 3 million per year to RMB 30 million per year.
In 2017, Cai Xukun filed a termination of the contract with Yihai Culture and filed a lawsuit. The main reason is that Yihai Culture unilaterally increased the contract liquidated damages and compensation at the same time, and also required Cai Xukun to bear the cost investment in his acting career activities and withdraw a high share of his acting activities income.
In addition, Cai Xukun believes that Yihai Culture has not fulfilled the performance brokerage obligations agreed in the contract, has not fulfilled the artist’s agency affairs management and operation obligations, and has not performed for him.If a complete and reasonable plan is made in the arts industry, it is impossible to improve professional and stable support for the better development of its acting career.
However, Yihai Culture tells another story. It stated that on November 12, 2015, Babaylan signed a brokerage contract with Cai Xukun and supplemented Komiks agreement, stipulating that he is Cai Xukun’s exclusive plenipotent broker, with the contract term to April 17, 2023. After signing the contract, the company arranged for Cai Xukun to participate in the large-scale cultivation talent show “Star Moving Asia”, and arranged for him to go to South Korea to receive artist training and release albums, helping Cai Xukun develop from a middle school student to a formal debut artist.
In January 2017, the company notified Cai Xukun to participate in the performance, but was rejected. Since then, Cai Xukun refused to participate in any activities arranged by the company. On February 10 of that year, Cai Xukun proposed to terminate the “Brandministrative Contract”, and then filed a lawsuit with the court, demanding the revocation of the brokerage contract.
Yihai Culture does not agree to terminate the contract. In the counterclaim, Hai Culture requested that Cai Xukun be ordered to pay 50 million yuan in breach of contract compensation, and paid 70% of all the acting income (including the late advertising agency revenue) obtained by starring in the online drama Cinema and Komiks variety show “Idol Trainee” to the company.
On October 29, 2018, Jing’an Court made a judgment to terminate the brokerage contract and compensation agreement signed by the two parties. However, regarding the compensation issues caused by the termination of the contract, the judgment stated that the two parties can negotiate on their own, and if they fail to reach the negotiation, they can claim the corresponding rights separately. This also became the origin of future disputes between the two parties.
11th month of 2022CinemaHai Culture has published several Weibo posts in succession, explaining the litigation matters with Cai Xukun and disclosed a number of expenditure evidence. Yihai Culture said that after signing the contract with Cai Xukun in November 2015, the company invested a lot of money and resources to cultivate, shape and promote the performance, and its early termination of the contract caused huge losses to the company.
The evidence posted by Yihai Culture includes training contracts signed for trainees such as Cai Xukun and some training and even plastic surgery fees, Babaylan In addition, there are photos of the company’s promotional activities for Cai Xukun’s group, and other information. The relevant materials have attracted great attention on Weibo. In addition to directly submitting Komiks to court due to termination disputes, relevant legal documents show that in recent years, Yihai Culture has sued Cai Xukun and his endorsement products and companies, including L’Oreal, Yangshengtang, VIVO, etc.
If he sued Cai Xukun, Cai Xukun Studio and VIVO Company, he believed that Cai Xukun and Cai Xukun Studio had cooperated with VIVO without the company’s consent, agreed that Cai Xukun was the spokesperson for the vivox23 series mobile phones, and shot a large number of advertisements and posters and other promotional materials.
Yihai Culture believes that its behavior infringes on its exclusive brokerage rights, constitutes unfair competition, seriously damages the legitimate rights and interests of Yihai Company, and causes significant economic losses to Yihai Company. However, most of these lawsuits ended with Yihai Culture’s withdrawal of the lawsuit.
For the first-instance judgment, many netizens congratulated Cai Xukun on winning the case and successfully terminated the contract↓
As well as netizens used this to warn young people who hoped to enter performing arts companies and MCN institutions↓
Source | Yangcheng Evening News·Yangcheng School Comprehensive Judgment Document Network, Upstream News, Securities Times, @Cai Xukun, Netizen Comments and other editors | Wu Xia