The Inbox, Why Does The Shortest Month Feel So Long Edition

Here at our polar vortex bunker in the freezing Nation’s Capital, supplies are running short and we’re vigorously debating whether we should make a mad dash to the Suits by SuitsMobile and drive straight down to visit our colleagues in Tampa, Florida, or just tough it out and pray/chant/hope that the cold will ultimately break.  In the meantime, we’ve defrosted the following interesting bits of news from the world of executive employment issues: 

• • • Non-competes down in Dixie: this analysis looks at how North Carolina courts enforce non-competes after a merger, this one looks at Florida’s statute governing those agreements, and this one discusses two recent Tennessee cases about them – and the author concludes non-competes are “alive and well (and enforceable)” in the Volunteer State. 
    • And from about as far from Dixie as you can get – Anchorage, Alaska – comes this thoughtful article about how small business owners and departing employees should look at non-competes. It notes that execs who leave to set up their own businesses in violation of a non-compete face the customary lawsuit as well as a unique risk: they will have “proved themselves dishonorable and word travels fast in Alaska.”
    • Arthur Laffer, please call your office and bring your famous curve: Hungary’s Constitutional Court struck down that country’s 98% tax on severance payments, finding it conflicted with EU rulings and regulations aimed at protecting property ownership.
    • The bounties offered to tipsters under Dodd-Frank haven’t yet turned into the problem big companies feared, the Wall Street Journal reports.    
    • The Title VII case involving retailer Abercrombie & Fitch’s prohibition on employees wearing hijabs – which we’ve written about before – led to a relatively rare split decision in the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals this week, on the procedural point of whether all of the justices of that court should reconsider a ruling in Abercrombie’s favor made by three of the justices (if you’re a fan of appellate practice and/or French, this was a petition for rehearing en banc).  Some pundits say this split could motivate the Supreme Court to take the case; others say no.  

• The Inbox