Articles Posted in Noncompete Agreements

Earlier this month, New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman’s office announced that it had secured an agreement from Examination Management Services, Inc. (“EMSI”) to stop using non-compete agreements for most of its New York employees.  EMSI is a Texas-based medical information services provider that required all of its New York employees to sign off on non-compete agreements, without regard to whether they had access to trade secret or other confidential information.  The non-compete agreement that EMSI required its New York employees to sign prevented them from working for a competitor for 9 months after leaving EMSI, within 50 miles of any location in which the employee worked for EMSI.  According to the Attorney General’s office, most of EMSI’s New York employees worked in non-senior level positions and mainly traveled throughout New York to conduct routine physical examinations.

Following a complaint by a former EMSI employee, whose job offer from a competitor was rescinded because of her non-compete agreement, the Attorney General’s office convinced EMSI to release the former employee from her non-compete agreement, not require non-senior level employees to sign them, and to notify current employees and former employees who left within the last 9 months that the non-compete agreement would no longer be in effect.

According to Attorney General Schneiderman, “[r]estricting rank-and-file workers from being able to find other jobs is unjust and inappropriate. . . .  Workers should be able to change jobs without fear of being sued by their prior employer.”

In this age of mergers and acquisitions, and increased employee mobility,  it is critical that employers and employees understand their respective noncompetition obligations.  A Southern District of New York court recently applied the “reasonableness” standards governing enforceability of non-competition agreements, or restrictive covenants, to no-hire agreements.  Specifically,in Reed Elsevier Inc. v. TransUnion Holding Company (S.D.N.Y. 13-CV-08739), the court found that the agreement was not necessary to safeguard a “protectable interest” of Reed Elsevier, and was, therefore, unenforceable.

In TransUnion, the parties had entered into an agreement prohibiting TransUnion from hiring certain senior management employees of Reed Elsevier for a time.  Ultimately, TransUnion hired the former Chief Technology Officer of Reed Elsevier, after TransUnion purchased the assets of the employee’s subsequent employer, and assumed the former employee’s employment contract.  It’s not clear to what extent the court was influenced by the fact that the employee had previously left Reed Elsevier to work for another employer (not TransUnion) and ended up becoming a TransUnion employee through a bankruptcy sale of assets.  Thus, the court considered whether under New York law, the no-hire agreement was (1) reasonable in time and area; (2) necessary to protect the employer’s legitimate interest; (3) not harmful to the public; and (3) not unreasonably burdensome to the employee.

Although the court found that the time restriction was unreasonable, because under the circumstances of the case, it would have prevented the employee from working for TransUnion for a period extending 31 months after his departure from Reed Elsevier, the court refused to shorten that restriction to a more reasonable period  because Reed Elsevier could not prove that the agreement was necessary to protect a legitimate interest.  Under New York law, a legitimate interest entitled to protection through a restrictive covenant would include (1) trade secrets; (2) confidential customer information; (3) the employer’s client base; and (4) irreparable harm where the employee’s services are unique and extraordinary.  The court found that none of these interests was at stake in this case.

New York Governor Paterson recently signed the Broadcast Employees Freedom Work Act which restricts employers in the broadcasting industry from conditioning employment on the signing of noncompete agreements.

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