Enforcement of Non Compete

Mo

We have every employee sign a one year non-compete when they start with the company. We have had one employee leave the company and go to a competitor. A letter was sent to the former employee reminding them of their non-compete, but nothing further was done.

Now another employe has left to go to a competitor and the company wants to enforce her non compete.

Can the company go after the 2nd employee if they did not pursue legal action with the 1st employee?

How enforceable are non-competes?

System

If the contract had nothing to do with 'Intellectual Property' it may not hold up in many courts. What are some of the specifics? Most courts look at them and laugh, believe me-I KNOW!

Parabeagle

Depending on which jurisdiction you're in, some courts are more willing to enforce noncompetes these days provided they're not overly restrictive. It's the ones that prohibit similar employment for 5 years within 500 miles that get used by the judge when he runs out of bathroom tissue.

I think you could go after the second employee for violating the agreement, but the fact you didn't go after the first is certainly a useful tidbit of information the defense will use against you.

TN HR

Do a search on this site. We've discussed this recently. Attorney Miller has posted some authoritative stuff recently. My experience with non-competes in general is that unless you are dealing with proprietary, intelectual, and/or trade secrets, you might as well forget it.

Gene

JM in ATL

In my opinion, if you did nothing about the first one, it wasn't important enough to do something about the second one.

Why is the second employee more important to restrict than the first? And if you do choose to persue the second ee and this ee falls into any protective class well then I would check the mail everyday for an EEOC complaint.

Without knowing what the non-compete says and the situation of the two employees, there really isn't much that we can help with. I would suggest you speak with your legal counsel about this, espcially if they are the ones that wrote it.

JM

Mo

thanks for the suggestion. I will check it out