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Posted

I may need an employment lawyer to handle an issue that is emerging, but need to ask a few quick questions first. It relates to non-compete agreements. Can anyone recommend the best of the best of the best of Surly for this area? 

Posted (edited)

GoLL handles that type of thing with regularity.  Troph did once.  I used to.

The relevant statute is here.

Generally speaking, to be enforceable it must be

  • ancillary to an otherwise enforceable agreement (not just at-will employment)
  • reasonable as to
    • time
    • territory
    • scope of activity restrained

It is no longer the law, but at one time, it was virtually a prerequisite that the employee at issue had received trade secrets/confidential information to enforce a covenant not to compete.

Although that is no longer the law, it is still my observation that covenant not to compete lawsuits/disputes devolve into trade secret lawsuits 9 times out of 10 because the covenant is hard to enforce.

Thus, the critical question may be, what "proprietary" information of the past employer do you possess that they might contend is valuable in the hands of your next employer or your self-employment in competition with them.

Edited by TwiceHorn
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Posted

Also, as to reasonableness, time is going to have to be less than two years, generally.  Territory is probably going to need to be restricted to the county or counties in which you actually worked.   And scope of activity restrained needs to be something more specific than "in competition with."

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Posted
8 hours ago, Cheeseweasel said:

Banging your Assistant was a bad idea.

Depending upon marital status , Could be a different noncompete…

  • 3 years later...
Posted
29 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

I don't do employment per se. I do covenants not to compete and trade secrets. GoLL is an employment lawyer 

 

Not much anymore.  I do general litigation (including covenants not to compete, which is the case I'm involved in as I sit here in a Zoom hearing).  But I don't really do a lot of employment counseling anymore.

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Posted

I'm a corporate lawyer, so employment law adjacent. I can listen and respond and if it's outside a down the middle issue I understand I can refer out.

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Posted

Basic employment law seems to be kind of all-lawyer adjacent.  In the course of being employed as lawyers and employing others, we pick up a fair amount of the fundamental shit.  Sometimes that level of knowledge can be helpful to a layperson, other times it takes something more complex and nuanced.

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Posted
6 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Basic employment law seems to be kind of all-lawyer adjacent.  In the course of being employed as lawyers and employing others, we pick up a fair amount of the fundamental shit.  Sometimes that level of knowledge can be helpful to a layperson, other times it takes something more complex and nuanced.

true. though I actually do just about all employment law transactional stuff especially exec employment agreements and complex comp like profits interests, stock options, stock grants and change of control bonuses. but DOL, regulatory laws like ADA and others I start to get fuzzy as we venture down those paths. I've been around enough convos with CEOs talking to employment counsel on some of the regulatory issues (ADA to be specific) to be dangerous though.

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  • 10 months later...
Posted
13 hours ago, Thetexashammer said:

Looking for a lawyer located in Austin area to handle a POA removal/family matter. PM if you know someone.

Not sure about the family matter part of it, @hornian deals with wills and estates, IIRC.  

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Posted
28 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

If by POA,  you mean power of attorney, and you're in Texas, this is about all you need to know https://www.hhs.texas.gov/regulations/forms/advance-directives/statutory-durable-power-attorney-sdpoa

One caveat has to do with the capacity of the one executing the POA.  I have seen at least two situations where someone revoked a POA by executing a new one and followed later by a finding that they were not competent to execute a new POA.  The kicker is that a person can have sufficient capacity for revoking a POA, but at the same time not sufficient to make a new one - leaving them without a POA at all.

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Posted
On 9/26/2024 at 6:49 PM, TwiceHorn said:

Basic employment law seems to be kind of all-lawyer adjacent.  In the course of being employed as lawyers and employing others, we pick up a fair amount of the fundamental shit.  Sometimes that level of knowledge can be helpful to a layperson, other times it takes something more complex and nuanced.

It seems like half of employment law is really unemployment law. 

  • 2 months later...
Posted

Bump...

Looking for an employment law attorney with a focus on representing the employer.  I have a confidentiality / non-solicitation agreement that's being violated by a former employee.  I've been down this path once before with a non-solicitation violation that resulted in a few thousand dollars spent with an attorney and a sternly worded letter but no real change to the dynamic or end result.  

This one is different.  Employee leaves to start his own business (direct competitor).  In retrospect, it was months of preparation by him to steer relationships and filter activities directly through him rather than normal channels as well as the continuous degradation of our reputation to customers.  He moved correspondence with customers from his company phone to his personal phone, utilized proprietary information when starting his new business, and potentially purposefully tanked estimates and jobs to cause financial harm to my business.  The end result is about $50K in financial losses on existing jobs plus him taking about $250K and counting in contracts that were bid during his tenure that he snatched from us.  And, he conveniently did a factory reset on his company phone the day that he resigned.  

I had a call last week with a large firm that told me it would be $50K-$80K in legal expenses with minimal expectation on the ability to recover damages.  I want to go after him hard, but I also don't have the desire to spend gobs of cash without seeking damages with a realistic chance of winning.  I'm looking for someone to shoot me straight on whether I need to go after this guy or let it die and lick my wounds.  

@Ghost of LL@troph any suggestions?

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Posted

Looks like you've got a pretty good case with actual rather than speculative, intangible damages.

A couple of things:  do you have confidentiality agreements regarding customer information and any effort to maintain it confidential?  And, "contracts that were bid during his tenure," did he bring those customers to you?

General note:  it's somewhat rare that you have provable damages as you do here, so that's a plus.  Recovery of damages from an individual or small business is always a crapshoot.  A lot of these ethically challenged entrepreneurial types don't have a pot to piss in until they've been in business for a good while, if even then.

Posted

Echoing TwiceHorn, chasing a start-up to recover damages is definitely a crapshoot.  However, if this guy was really successful at stealing your business and is himself succeeding, there's at least a chance you can recoup some of your losses (or at least staunch the ongoing harm via a TRO/injunction against him and the start-up).

Good luck.  If you're in NTX send me a PM.  I work with another former co-worker and law school classmate of GoLL and this is right in his wheelhouse.

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Posted
1 hour ago, TwiceHorn said:

Looks like you've got a pretty good case with actual rather than speculative, intangible damages.

A couple of things:  do you have confidentiality agreements regarding customer information and any effort to maintain it confidential?  And, "contracts that were bid during his tenure," did he bring those customers to you?

General note:  it's somewhat rare that you have provable damages as you do here, so that's a plus.  Recovery of damages from an individual or small business is always a crapshoot.  A lot of these ethically challenged entrepreneurial types don't have a pot to piss in until they've been in business for a good while, if even then.

Thanks for everyone responding so quickly.  I'm in Austin.  

Yes.  Our confidentiality agreement includes customer information.  And, he was in a senior leadership role with access to literally everything within our business, including proprietary estimating software.  

After his resignation, I thought things were going to go pretty amicably.  He said all the right things.  I never want to prevent someone from putting food on their table, so I went so far as to specifically outline the customers he dealt with prior to his tenure with us in writing, and said these were exempt from the non-solicitation clause.  In this case, the customers in question were all ones that I dealt with prior to his tenure or that we acquired during his tenure.  

FWIW, though he is a small startup, he has two significant investors behind him.  And, they made a rough "offer" to me in the summer of 2024 for a specific segment of our business, so they inherently knew there was value to that portion of our business.  So, this isn't the case of a guy trying to run a company out of his garage.  There's significant financial investment here.  

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