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A recent non-compete dispute in Florida raises questions about the concept of legitimate business interests under Florida law. Until October, prominent Florida chef Domenica Macchia ran the kitchen at a St. Petersburg restaurant called Three Birds Tavern. After leaving Three Birds last fall, Macchia became the chef at another local restaurant called Beak’s Old Florida. … Continue reading
Recent developments in Pennsylvania provide yet another compelling example of why non-compete agreements in the healthcare sector should be void as against public policy. In late December, five obstetricians who were affiliated with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) gave notice that they intended to leave the system to go work for rival Highmark … Continue reading
In October of this year, Amazon sued a former employee who had jumped ship and gone to work for Google. Beginning in mid-2010, Daniel Powers served as a vice-president of Amazon’s Web Services division. His principal job in that capacity was to sell Amazon cloud computing services to businesses. Powers left Amazon in June, signed … Continue reading
Early this month, eight employees of the advertising giant Leo Burnett Company simultaneously left the company in the midst of work on a critical project for a major client. Ostensibly, the Leo Burnett Eight have their eyes set on taking that client and making it big on their own. Leo Burnett is one of the … Continue reading
On Friday, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against eBay accusing the company of entering a non-compete pact with software maker Intuit. Under the terms of the alleged secret deal, both companies agreed to refrain from recruiting or hiring each other’s employees. According to the DOJ, both companies aggressively policed their respective workforces to … Continue reading
A recent non-compete case out of Missouri raises a number of interesting considerations, including some related to choice of law and conflicts of law. The case is TLC Vision (USA) Corp. v. Freeman, 2012 WL 5398671 (E.D. Mo. Nov. 2, 2012). TLC is basically in the business of running centers that provide vision correction services. … Continue reading
In the realm of non-compete and trade secret litigation, there are certain truisms that have stood the test of time. Among the most basic: Do not take company files with you. This is a classic blunder. You know, like getting involved in a land war in Asia. It is a bad idea. When you take … Continue reading
Yesterday evening, at a cigar bar in Fort Lauderdale (shout out to the Florida Cigar Company), I had a discussion with a few gentlemen that touched upon the issues of confidential information, non-compete agreements and computer forensics. One of these gentlemen was in the process of separating from his current employer and starting his own … Continue reading
As an attorney who defends employees in non-compete cases, I am generally critical of how such agreements are used. For one thing, it seems that everybody has a non-compete agreement these days (maids, bartenders, news anchors), even when the facts suggest that such an agreement is unenforceable. And every plaintiff in every non-compete case runs … Continue reading
Interesting non-compete news out of Weymouth, Massachusetts (a small city about twenty miles south of Boston). Back in September 2009, a Boston-area dentist Gerald Maher sold his practice to a newly formed company called Dental Wellness. As part of the transaction, Maher agreed (1) to refrain from practicing dentistry within a 15-mile radius of Dental … Continue reading
the non-compete blog 