Please help: Consumer Law and Duress

[Kursal]

This is a very strange situation and I am hoping that someone out there can help.

In the summer of 2005 I was working with a company (who shall remain nameless). The company changed premises. On the day of the change it was revealed by the company director that he did not have a second guarenter for the new lease. He forced another member of staff to sign the lease.

Five weeks later he assaulted that member of staff who then left. Since then the police have been involved and it has gone to court. He has been found guilty of 2 counts of forgery, common assault and harassment (as well as assault on his wife).

Now, at the time of the assault the member of staff (who I now work with in another company) did try and remove herself from the lease but was unable to. She wanted nothing more to do with the director or his company. Well, not only was she unable to do this but the director has now gone in to arrears for the rent. The landlord is now asking the ex-member of staff to pay for everything (rent, legal costs, making good and legal costs of finding another tenant) and she just doesn't have the money.

As you can imagine, she is not happy about this at all.

Now, we believe that she signed the contract under duress. If she hadn't signed this would have resulted in threats and intimidation from the director (both of which had happened before) until she did sign. She was also afraid of loosing her income if she did not sign (as had happened shortly before when someone else had been forced out of the company as a result of the director's behaviour).

I would be very gratefully if anybody could help us with this situation. We don't know what to do and we have no idea where to start looking for things like lawyers.

Would she have some recourse to invalidate the lease?
Will she be forced to pay all of the costs?
Where can we find a good lawyer to deal with this?

As you can imagine, this is causing some distress. Please help!

[LimeLegal]

She needs to take legal advice. We have this service on our web site under Do I have a case with a pdf on costs involved. Her taking legal advice on this should be the first and urgent point of call. A contract can be voided in such cases but without looking at all the circumstances we cannot help further.