This is not for residency, this is for the job after. I've signed my contract with a group but got offered a better deal long term in a better location closer to family. What can they do to you if you've already signed but decide not to got there? The contract doesn't state anything about not working there period. It does state I have to give back the signing bonus if I don't work there for at least one year, the bonus I've not collected yet ether. Thoughts?
Couple of things. First, you not only have a professional degree which presumes a level of contractual sophistication, but also concede you had an attorney look at it (regardless of how green they were). So the presumption in any court is that you understood, negotiated and ultimately agreed with all the contract provisions. So whatever it says about terminating in the contract is going to apply. Terminating a contract has little to do with ever "starting work". The second you sign a contract it may be in effect, and to get out of it you have to terminate it, even if you never started. So you may be obligated to stay on for X months to legally terminate, to give requisite notice, etc. Since you aren't going to do that, you will be in breach. So you go to the provisions of the contract that discuss material breaches.
Second, when you sign a contract and the other side to the agreement reasonably relies on the contract, they may incur damages and you may be liable for them. So, for instance, if a company calls off it's employment search, relying on you coming to work for them, then when you renege, whatever reasonable cost they incur now to replace your position can be damages coming out of your pocket. If they ordered custom stuff for you --white coats, business cards, etc, that's all going to come out of your pocket as damages. If they paid you a signing bonus, that's coming back. If they lose any business because they are short staffed on the date you were supposed to start but didn't, they may be able to show damages. So in short, they get back whatever they paid you, plus reasonably incurred damages, plus sometimes whatever it says they get from you in the event of a material breach of the contract. And even if you somehow didn't end up damaging the plaintiff significantly, you are going to run up legal bills very quickly demonstrating that fact.
Not to mention that you may get a bad reputation and burn some bridges to boot. The short answer is that you never ever ever want to sign a contract thinking that it's something you can get out of. The dumbest people in the world are folks who say things like "this contract is not worth the paper it's printed on". I've never met a person with this attitude that didn't end up paying out a lot of green paper that was worth exactly the denomination printed on it. A contract is a binding obligation, and one that the legal system does a good job of enforcing. If you signed one, think long and hard and get really good legal counsel before you opt to breach it.
