Ryan Kankowski
Ryan Kankowski’s former agent has launched a lawsuit against the Sharks player for a claim of R 340 000.00 in commission allegedly due.
In 2010, Touch Sports Management launched a High Court action in Durban against the No 8 to recover the money it claimed he owed.
However, nothing came out of it with the matter being postponed indefinitely. Now it has come out that the parties have agreed to take the arbitration route, according to Touch Sports Management lawyer Riaan Venter.
The Mercury
The application is due to be overseen by retired Judge Jan Combrink. Arbitration is a less formal proceeding that takes place outside of the court-room, but the judgment decided upon is binding once confirmed by the High Court.
The arbitration proceedings would mostly be based on papers submitted to the High Court in 2010.
According to the papers, the sports management company entered into an agreement with Kankowski in September 2008 in terms of which he agreed to be contracted exclusively to the management company for two years up to September 2010.
It said that should the rugby player no longer require their services, he had to give them 12 weeks’ written notice.
In terms of the contract the sports management company said it would be paid a 7.5 percent fee of the contract negotiated for Kankowski, upon him signing a contract with a rugby club affiliated with the International Rugby Board.
It further said that it undertook to obtain a minimum of R 150 000.00 a year for him in commercial revenue and products while he played rugby in South Africa.
The company said it negotiated a three-year contract for Kankowski with the Sharks, valued at R 4.3 million. This entailed R 1.3 million for 2009, R 1.5 million for 2010 and R 1.5 million for 2011. In the end, the company said its commission on this totalled around the region of R340 000.
Kankowski has denied owing anything to the company. He said in legal documents that he did sign ‘a vague contract’, but added that he was already under contract to the Sharks at the time.
The sticking point for Kankowski is that he signed documents with the company in the belief that Hilton Houghton, who worked at the company, would represent him. He was unaware that the agreement was intended to be between him and the sports management company. He had never intended to bind himself to the company.
According to the document, when Kankowski became aware that Houghton was no longer employed by the company, he felt he was entitled to terminate his contract.