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 Document Network, the court found that Cai Xukun did not breach the contract by maliciously, and Cai Xukun was sentenced to pay the former boss 3 million liquidated damages.
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 compensation of 3 million yuan in the first instance. The court found that he did not breach of contract by maliciously. The documents show that the plaintiff Yihai Company claimed that in November 2015, Cinema he signed a contract with the defendant Cai Xukun, stipulating that the plaintiff was the defendant’s exclusive plenipotent broker, and the contract was href=”https://comicmov.com/”>Komiks deadline 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, Komiks will have to pay the plaintiff an early termination compensation of 30 million yuan per year for every year.
In February 2017, the 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 signed by the two parties. href=”https://comicmov.com/”>Komiks and the supplementary agreement. Therefore, the plaintiff sued the court, and asked the defendant to pay the plaintiff a 30 million yuan in termination compensation and a 15 million yuan in breach of contract.
Defendant Cai Xukun argued that the contract stipulates that the defendant unilaterally proposed to terminate the contract. In addition to the contract, the plaintiff needs to pay compensation to the plaintiff, the plaintiff has put a lot of energy into cultivating the defendant and href=”https://comicmov.com/”>Cinema cost, 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 claimed expenditure was not based on any basis. In addition, the amount of compensation proposed by the plaintiff was significantly inflated.
The first instance court held that the part of the 15 million breach of contract loss was a portrait authorization cooperation agreement signed by the plaintiff and the defendant during the termination dispute between the plaintiff and the defendant. The resulting termination compensation was caused by the plaintiff should pay attention to but did not note that the cooperation agreement may face the risk of inability to be performed. The defendant is now required to bear the insufficient basis for termination losses.
Regarding the part of the termination compensation, the defendant was underage when the contract and supplementary contract were signed by the plaintiff and the defendant’s mother Xu. The defendant has not yet formed a clear plan and estimate of his future development and achievements. The performance period of the two contracts is too long, in fact, not conducive to the defendant’s own development and creation performance. href=”https://comicmov.com/”>BabaylanThe art industry has a stable, healthy and orderly environment, and 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 is not in line with the principle of fairness and reason.
In the end, the court determined the termination compensation at its discretion based on the plaintiff’s publicity investment in the defendant, the defendant’s income standards, and the performance period.omicmov.com/”>BabaylanCinema is RMB 3 million.
The judgment date shown in the above judgment document is August 10, 2022. The document shows that if you are not satisfied with this judgment, you can submit an appeal to this Court within fifteen days from the date of delivery of the judgment and press the href=”https://comicmov.com/”>Babaylan‘s number of parties or representatives filed a copy and appealed to the Shanghai Second Intermediate 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 a trial announcement many times.
The dispute between the two parties has been a long time and when signing a contract, Cai Xukun was underage. According to 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 Komiks Haoshang Media (Hunan) Co., Ltd. for participating in the “Star Move Asia”. During the recording of the program, due to the transfer of the program producer, Cai Xukun was told to transfer the contract, otherwise he would not be able to continue participating in the program. In order to continue to complete the recording of the program, 2015 href=”https://comicmov.com/”>CinemaOn November 17, Cai Xukun signed a brokerage contract with Yihai Culture. Cai Xukun was 17 years old at that time.
After the contract was signed, the two parties signed a supplementary contract in June 2016, and modified Cai Xukun’s termination compensation. For example, Cai Xukun’s unilateral termination compensation was changed from 8 million yuan to 80 million yuan, and the early termination compensation was increased from 3 million yuan per year.The yuan is modified to RMB 30 million per year.
In 2017, Cai Xukun filed a termination of the contract with Yihai Culture and filed a lawsuit. CinemaThe main reason is that Yihai Culture unilaterally increased the contract liquidated damages and compensations at will, 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 arts brokerage obligations agreed in the contract, has not fulfilled the artist’s brokerage affairs management and operation obligations, and has not made complete and reasonable plans for his acting career, so it is impossible to improve professional and stable support for the better development of his acting career.
However, Yihai Culture tells another story. It stated that on November 12, 2015, he signed a brokerage contract and supplementary agreement with Cai Xukun, stipulating that he is Cai Xukun’s exclusive plenipotent broker, with the contract term to 2Cinema023.
After signing the contract, the company arranged for Cai Xukun to participate in the large-scale cultivation talent show “Star Asia”, and arranged for going to South Korea to receive artist training, release albums, etc., to help Cai Xukun develop from a middle school student to an artist officially debut.
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 Brokerage 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 late advertising endorsement income) obtained by him in the online drama and variety show “Idol Trainee Babaylan” to the company.
On October 29, 2018, Jing’an Court made a judgment to terminate the brokerage contract and compensation agreement signed by the Cinema 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.
November 2022,Hai 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 his acting career, shape his image and promote it, and his early termination of the contract caused huge losses to the company.
The evidence posted by Yihai Culture includes the training contract signed for trainees such as Cai Xukun and others, and some training and even plastic surgery fees details. 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 going to court directly due to termination disputes, relevant legal documents show that in recent years, Yihai Culture has also sued Cai Xukun and his endorsed products and companies, including L’Oreal, Yangshengtang, VIVO, etc.
If he sued Cai Xukun, KomiksCai 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, @CinemaCai Xukun, Netizen Comments and other editors | Wu Xia