Show posts for: Noncompete Agreements ‎

  • As readers of this blog know, corporate executives (and regular employees) are often subject to non-competes in their employment agreements, as well as other provisions designed to ensure that if they leave their job, they will not be able to work for a competitor for some period of time.  By contrast, law firms are ethically prohibited from imposing such restrictive covenants on their attorneys.  The justification for this exceptionalism is the premise that clients have the right to choose their counsel and any restrictions on a lawyer’s right to practice could impede that choice.  (Of course, why client choice is more imperative in an attorney/client relationship than other professional relationships of trust has always been a bit vague.)

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  • When a company believes that an employee has breached a non-compete agreement by going to work for a competitor, one remedy it can seek is a preliminary injunction. A preliminary injunction is meant to preserve the status quo in a case pending a trial on the merits. In the context of non-compete litigation, this means that an employer can file a lawsuit and quickly obtain an order barring its competitor from hiring the employee.

    Getting such an injunction isn’t so easy, however, as shown by an Illinois federal court’s recent decision in Cortz, Inc. v. Doheny Enterprises, Inc.

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  • In 2011, a group of executives left Horizon Health Corporation for a competitor, Acadia, but they didn’t leave everything behind. Horizon’s president took a “massive, massive amount” of Horizon documents with him on an external hard drive. And despite provisions in their contracts prohibiting them from soliciting Horizon’s employees, the executives recruited a key member of Horizon’s sales team, John Piechocki, who copied lists of sales leads and added them to his new company’s “master contact list.”

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  • We’ve counted down our top posts from 2015, from American Apparel to Dr. Robert Schuller. Now, we look at the issues in executive disputes that are likely to draw the most attention in 2016.

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  • The turn of the calendar is always a good time to reflect on what has come before and preview what lies ahead. In this post, we count down our most popular posts of 2015 about executive disputes. Later, we’ll look at what to expect in 2016.

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  • The Inbox – The Games We Play

    | Zuckerman Spaeder Team

    On his way through the San Francisco International Airport with the hopes of boarding his flight to China, Silicon Valley former employee Jing Zeng was not greeted by the friendly faces of a flight crew, but rather the handcuff-wielding agents of the FBI. Detained on charges of stealing trade secrets, Mr. Zeng will have to remain in the US and explain the behavior that led up to his August 20th airport arrest. The Wall Street Journal explains that Mr. Zeng, a new employee with Machine Zone, maker of Game of War: Fire Age (you may have seen the ads prominently featuring model Kate Upton sporting medieval garb), sought to change teams and work under a different boss. His request was denied and the company eventually asked Mr. Zeng to leave. Mr. Zeng then allegedly began to download highly valuable user data from a proprietary database in an attempt to leverage his possession of the information for a more lucrative severance agreement. The company contacted the FBI, and Mr. Zeng’s arrest followed. Now, Mr. Zeng finds himself in the custody of federal authorities, although his LinkedIn profile indicates that he is “ready for next venture.”

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  • The Inbox – The SEC’s Claws May Come Out

    | Zuckerman Spaeder Team

    We recently discussed the SEC’s proposed rules pursuant to the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act regarding the clawback of executive compensation under various circumstances related to accounting restatements. Now it seems Hertz’s former CEO, Mark Frissora, may become one of the first test cases should these rules survive the comment period. According to Footnoted, upon Frissora’s resignation last September, he received over $10 million plus other benefits. But the company recently filed a 10-K for 2014 that not only included restated results for 2012 and 2013, but also made a disclosure that could suggest a possible future effort to claw back Frissora’s severance package. The disclosure blamed Frissora for creating an environment that “in some instances may have led to inappropriate accounting decisions and the failure to disclose information critical to an effective review of transactions and accounting entries.” Perhaps another interesting twist is whether any potential clawback will have an effect on Frissora in his new role as CEO of Caesar’s Entertainment, a position he assumed two weeks ahead of Hertz’s delayed filings.

    California is known for its skeptical treatment of employers’ efforts to enforce non-competes, but it may not be as friendly toward all employees as originally suspected, according to The National Law Review. In 2014, California resident Stacey Sabol-Krutz left her position with Quad Electronics, a Michigan-based employer, to take a position with a rival company, which was also based in Michigan. Sabol-Krutz had started working for Quad in Michigan, and signed her employment contract there, but moved to California in 2011. Her employment contract specifically named her new employer as a company that Sabol-Krutz wouldn’t join for 12 months after leaving Quad. After Quad found out about Sabol-Krutz’s new job, it sued her for breach of contract. She, in turn, filed suit in California, attempting to invalidate the agreement under California law. The California court, noting the absence of a choice of law provision in the agreement, found that Michigan law applied, using a “governmental interest” test. Although courts may refuse to apply a choice of law provision when construing restrictive covenants (as we illuminated here), Sabol-Krutz’s move to California to work for an out-of-state employer did not win her the protection of California law.

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  • National employers sometimes include choice-of-law provisions in their employment agreements, selecting one particular state’s law even for employees who don’t work in that state.  For example, a company based in Massachusetts might ask its California employees to sign agreements selecting Massachusetts law.  Applying one state’s law to all of the employer’s relationships can make outcomes more predictable, especially when the employer knows that law well.

    But not always, as the New York Court of Appeals held earlier this month in Brown & Brown, Inc. v. Johnson.  In Brown & Brown, the Court of Appeals refused to apply an employment agreement’s selection of Florida law, holding that New York law should determine whether a customer non-solicitation provision in that same agreement was enforceable. 

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  • In our last post, we counted down our most popular posts of 2014, from A-Rod to Walgreen.  Now it’s time to take a look at the issues in executive disputes that are likely to draw plenty of attention in 2015.

    1.            Dodd-Frank Bounties and Whistleblower Litigation on the Rise

    In November 2014, the SEC released its annual report on its Dodd-Frank whistleblower award program.  The theme of the report is that Dodd-Frank is paying off – both for the SEC and for whistleblowing employees.  The SEC reported that it issued whistleblower awards to more people in its 2014 fiscal year than in all previous years combined, including a $30 million bounty to one whistleblower in a foreign country.  The number of whistleblower tips received continues to increase, and we expect news of more substantial awards in 2015.  Meanwhile, litigation over various Dodd-Frank issues, such as whether a whistleblower claim is subject to arbitration, whether the shield against whistleblower retaliation applies overseas, and whether a whistleblower must report to the SEC in order to bring a retaliation claim, will continue to percolate in the federal courts.

    2.            The Supreme Court Weighs in on Employment Issues

    A couple of key Supreme Court cases will address employee rights that apply across the board, from the C-suite to the assembly line.  In Young v. United Parcel Service, the Court will decide whether, and in what circumstances, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act requires an employer that accommodates non-pregnant employees with work limitations to accommodate pregnant employees who have similar limitations.  And in EEOC v. Abercrombie & Fitch Stores, Inc., the Court will address whether an employer can be liable under the Civil Rights Act for refusing to hire an employee based on religion only if the employer actually knew that a religious accommodation was required based on knowledge received directly from the job applicant.

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  • Who doesn’t love the year-end countdown?  We’re here to offer you one of our own – our most-read posts in 2014 about executive disputes.  The posts run the gamut from A (Alex Rodriguez) to Z, or at least to W (Walgreen).  They cover subjects from sanctified (Buddhists and the Bible) to sultry (pornographic materials found in an executive’s email).  Later this week, we’ll bring you a look at what to expect in 2015.

    Without further ado, let the countdown begin!

    8.            The Basics: Dodd-Frank v. Sarbanes-Oxley

    This post is an oldie but a goodie.  It includes a handy PDF chart that breaks down the differences in the Dodd-Frank and Sarbanes-Oxley whistleblower laws.  Each of these laws continues to be a hot-button issue for plaintiffs and employers.

    7.            When Employment Relationships Break Bad

    America may have bidden adieu to Walter White and his pals on Breaking Bad, but employment relationships continue to spin off in some very unpleasant ways.  Such was the case with Stephen Marty Ward, who ended up in federal prison after he threatened his employer with disclosure of its trade secrets, as we covered in this post.

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As the regulatory and business environments in which our clients operate grow increasingly complex, we identify and offer perspectives on significant legal developments affecting businesses, organizations, and individuals. Each post aims to address timely issues and trends by evaluating impactful decisions, sharing observations of key enforcement changes, or distilling best practices drawn from experience. InsightZS also features personal interest pieces about the impact of our legal work in our communities and about associate life at Zuckerman Spaeder.

Information provided on InsightZS should not be considered legal advice and expressed views are those of the authors alone. Readers should seek specific legal guidance before acting in any particular circumstance.

Contributing Editors
John J. Connolly

John J. Connolly
Partner
Email | +1 410.949.1149


Man

Andrew N. Goldfarb
Partner
Email | +1 202.778.1822


Sara Alpert Lawson_listing

Sara Alpert Lawson
Partner
Email | +1 410.949.1181


Nicholas DiCarlo

Nicholas M. DiCarlo
Associate
Email | +1 202.778.1835


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