So often in Franchising piss poor performing franchisees will attempt to get out of paying their royalties or following a franchise agreement as they promised. They may have a total lapse of integrity or merely have never intended to follow the agreement in the first place.

Often franchisee attorneys [scum, opinion] will find some little minor detail in the contract and claim the franchisor did not perform up to the standards set and therefore the franchisee is entitled to all their money back times three, leaving plenty of money for the attorney as well? Isn't that special. So I came up with this clause and inserted it into all of our franchise agreements;

7.14 Severability

The paragraphs of this Franchise Agreement are severable and in the event any paragraph, portion, term or provision of this Franchise Agreement is held invalid or unenforceable by a court of competent jurisdiction, then the remainder of this Franchise Agreement will continue in full force and effect. If, any part of this Franchise Agreement is declared invalid, that declaration will not affect the validity of the remaining portion, which will remain in full force and effect as if this Agreement had been executed with the invalid portion omitted. The parties declare their intention that they would have executed the remaining portion of this Agreement without including any part, parts, or portions, which may be declared invalid in the future.

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It is unfortunate that you have to deal with such things, but you do and so if you are running a franchising company carefully look at your severability clauses and consult a franchising professional parasite [attorney] of your own to see what is best for you. Consider all this in 2006.