Legal Question in Business Law in Puerto Rico

Re: Training Contracts

The prospect of the airline's success in the lawsuit against you would depend on the terms of the contract. Anyone can walk away from a job in PR. So, if the airline knew that you could walk away from the job at any moment, it should have put in the contract a provision which entitled them to recover the costs of training. If no such term appeared in your contract, the Constitution of PR should protect pursuant to the Dolphin (case) jurisprudence. Nonetheless if the recovery clause was in the contract, recovery would still need to be justified by an unjust enrichment doctrine, which is designed to prevent your obtention of free benefit. Ergo if you did not benefit from the training, like let's say: you are now certified by such training to fly a certain kind of aircraft or route; then I think you may still oppose the employment liberty defense. Moreover, if you want to be really creative in your defense, you may still argue that your employment conditions were an essentil part of your employment contract, and when your former employer failed to fulfill these obligations then you became entited to resolve the contract. Thus, the former employer, it may be argued, assumed the risk of losing the costs of the training, when they did not provide the requisite or expected working conditions.