From my colleague Stephen Furnari comes this intelligent article on how to make employment non-compete agreements “stick.” Courts are generally loathe to enforce an agreement that would keep someone out of gainful employment; companies are loathe to employ people who will walk away with their customer base and trade secrets.
So a delicate balance needs to be struck. Steve’s article provides eight tips to crafting well-honed non-compete provisions and six practical steps to take if you think your employee has violated the non-compete agreement. At the end of the day, though, speak to a business attorney before putting any of this into place.
Hi Nina,
Just wanted to say that I’ve started reading your blog. I’m wondering if you have heard about the book, “What Men Don’t Tell Women About Business”. I heard the guy (Chris Flett) on the Today Show and thought you probably have already heard of him. I’m wondering what your thoughts were. He seems to be really taking on the ‘Old Boys Club”. I just emailed him, but haven’t heard back.
Anyway, keep up the great writing.
Best,
Bihter.
Mr. Furnari has written a very good article on drafting non-compete agreements. My law firm represent employees only in fighting non-compete and non-solicitation agreements and I want to add to Mr. Furnari’s article that the issue of the validity and enforceability of a non-compete is very state specific. There is no federal law governing the issue and each state looks at non-competes differently.
We often blog on these issues at:
http://virginianoncompete.blogspot.com/
Please we need your help, our company claims that they have a non compete contract signed by us and they have closed our doors and our office, leaving us without a job the day before thanks giving, we have ask for a copy of said contract ,they claim that they have sent it to a lawyer and that we will need a lawyer to obtain it, we do not believe we ever signed such a paper and if we did it was certainly never explained to any of us, we are nurses and have patients in a retirement center who need us and we have such a wonderful relationship with these elderly people, and even though another nursing registry will be coming in and taking over our office the company that we work for says we cannot work for that other company , leaving us without a job period. We are devastated, and have no money for a lawyer, Nurses to go is the company who is being so uncaring and unprofessional and rotten to us. Please help us?
Joyce Johnson and
Jennifer Ferguson.