I don't know what the terms of your agreement were and I wouldn't say it's "illegal" on its face. Do you have a civil action? Perhaps. This is a difficult one to define for a number of reasons, most important being we don't know what was allegedly misrepresented to you. IMHO, for you to even begin to potentially claim that you were "duped" and that your new employer should be liable for something would be for you to indicate that the new company materially misrepresented your position. For example, they induced you to join there company representing that you were not in a sales position and that there would be no quotas, etc. Just because you've said you don't want to stay in such a position doesn't mean that your new company promised that you might not have a quota of sorts. It might not have been a good idea to hire someone who specifically said that it's not the job he wanted. The truth is that if they didn't make it clear what the position was, a prudent measure would have been requiring them to make the job description clear before you decided to leave your old employer - would you not agree?