The team has the right to cancel the agreement for any reason whatsoever at the end of each season, without paying any compensation to the player, including the team will not be obligated to pay the player any consideration for the season that will begin after the cancellation notice. Notice of cancellation of the agreement will be given until June 1, 2019 after the end of each season to the player or his performance."
- Section 9 of the Severance Pay Law states as follows:
- (a) If an employee is employed under a fixed-term contract and the period has come to an end, he is considered to have been dismissed for the purposes of this Law, unless the employer offers him to renew the contract; if the employee refuses to renew the contract - he is deemed to have resigned, for the purposes of this Law.
(b) The employer's proposal to renew the contract as stated in subsection (a) must be given to the employee at least three months before the end of the contract period.
- The defendant's argument, as stated, is that since she signed a contract with the plaintiff for a period of three seasons in advance, she was not obligated to offer him to renew the contract every season. In other words, if she had not chosen to exercise the option to terminate the contract, then she should not have offered the plaintiff to renew the contract, since in any case the plaintiff would have continued to play the next season in accordance with the agreement. Thus, the circumstances of the case should not be regarded as dismissal by virtue of section 9 of the Severance Pay Law (see sections 29-30 of the defendant's summaries).
We are unable to accept this argument. Section 9 of the Severance Pay Law establishes entitlement to severance pay where the employer does not offer the employee to renew the contract at the end of the stipulated period, so that according to the provisions of the section, the employee is considered to have been fired, and hence the employee's entitlement to severance pay grows. However, this determination does not exclude entitlement to severance pay, where the defendant took an active action and notified the plaintiff of the termination of the engagement with him - within the period of the fixed-term contract - by virtue of the obligation to pay severance pay in the act of severance (see section 1 of the Severance Pay Law). In our case, we are dealing with a fixed-term contract of three seasons of games, consisting of an undertaking to employ the player for three seasons - i.e., for three fixed periods (if you wish - 'Agreement for Fixed Periods within a Fixed Period').
- Reinforcement for this conclusion can be found in the defendant's arguments and even in the termination letter of April 18, 2018 (attached as an appendix to the motion to attach evidence dated May 4, 2023), in which she interprets clause 2.4 of the agreement as an option given to her to continue the engagement with the plaintiff for another season, which she chose not to exercise. This letter reads as follows:
Re: Non-exercise of an option