Quite often I have lawyer friends ask me why Texas lawyers (and lawyers from other states) aren’t the subject of non-competes? There aren’t really any cases that I’ve run across on the subject, which sometimes is an indicator that law firms aren’t trying to enforce them. The answer is not that complicated. Queue Texas
A Texas non-compete must satisfy two main components to be enforceable. The non-compete has to be ancillary to an otherwise enforceable agreement and be reasonable in time and scope. Before the Texas Supreme Court this week was a case where the court was asked to consider a non-compete without a geographical restriction and consider whether
The details are slim from a recent article from the New York Post about a $3 million dollar non-compete/breach of contract case against a New York City hair stylist. What we know:
Nobody likes non-competes except business owners/leaders trying to use them to protect their business. It is the proverbial political softball that some legislatures attempt to address every session. In May the Obama Administration took on non-competes and released a report entitled “Non-Compete Agreement: Analysis of the Usage, Potential Issues, and State Responses”. The report
I went to school in Utah and manage to ski up there every so often. That’s a picture of my son and I in December. Recently I ran accross an article breaking down changes to Utah’s and Idaho’s non-compete laws. The Utah statute really grabbed my attention. The highlights: (1) non-competes can only last
There is a good article from the Houston Chronicle this week outlining a non-compete dispute between two former compensation consultants and their former employer. The facts are pretty standard fare for this type of dispute:
Last week I had the privilege of speaking and attending the Texas Non-Compete Camp put on by UT LAW CLE and Mike Maslanka. There were a number of great lawyers there addressing topics ranging from whether to sue the new employer of a former employee to ethical considerations of representing both the employee and employer.
On Thursday I will be speaking at the 2015 Non-Compete Camp put on by The University of Texas School of Law. There will be a lot of great lawyers speaking on various post-employment covenant issues – https://utcle.org/conferences/NC15.
It’s always interesting to take a look at other states to see how they deal with non-compete legislation. We’ve discussed Masschusetts and most recently doctor non-competes in New Mexico. Hawaii is the latest state to enact new noncompete legislation targeting workers in a “technology business”. This is how the Hawaii legislature defined “technology business”:
For the last few months I’ve been involved in a number of temporary restraining order/preliminary injunction cases in state and federal courts in a number of different industries/professions. Some general reminders/lessons from non-compete/non-solicit fights: