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:
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.
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:
When news of the Jimmy John’s non-compete came out last October my concern was the impact it would have on businesses with legitimate non-competes. There is always a populist theme that is anti-non-compete. Employees should be able to come and go as they please and a non-compete agreement prevents that. “Bad” non-competes undermine “good”
It’s been 3 and a half years since the Marsh opinion that redefined what could constitute consideration for a Texas non-compete and courts have bee relatively quiet on non-competes since then. That’s not surprising from the Texas Supreme Court as Marsh was the third of a trilogy of opinions dealing with the subject. Appellate courts
In Seattle, former Amazon Web Services Strategic Partnership Manager Zoltan Szabadi was sued by Amazon for violation of his non-compete agreement. Szabadi is now with Google in their cloud platform business. The lawsuit alleges:
Szabadi was directly and integrally involved with the marketing of Amazon’s cloud