Tag: Non-compete

Two-Year Continuous Employment Rule to Support Non-Compete Validated by Illinois Appeals Court

Fifield v. Premier, 2013 IL App (1st) 120327 is rightly regarded as a watershed case in Illinois employment and non-compete law circles for squarely stating that two years of continuous employment is the required consideration to support a non-compete agreement in an at-will setting.

Prairie Rheumatology Associates, SC v. Francis, 2014 IL App (3d) 140338 represents an appeals court’s recent validation of the two-year rule in the context of a medical practice suing to prevent one of its former physician employees from competing against it.

The plaintiff medical company and the doctor defendant entered into an at-will employment contract (it could be terminated by either side at any time) that contained a 2-year and 14-mile non-compete term. The defendant agreed not to perform competing medical services for 2 years and within 14 miles of the plaintiff’s office measured from the date defendant’s employment ceased and the physical office location.

19 months into her tenure, defendant quit and went to work for a medical services firm located nine miles from plaintiff’s office. Plaintiff sought a preliminary injunction to enforce the non-compete. The trial court entered an injunction that prevented the defendant from treating plaintiff’s current patients but allowed defendant to treat patients that belonged to her before she started working for the plaintiff. The defendant appealed.

Held: reversed. Non-compete lacks consideration and is not enforceable.

Reasons:

In Illinois, a post-employment restrictive covenant (like a non-compete agreement) is enforceable only where it is reasonable in geographic and temporal scope (“space and time”) and necessary to protect a legitimate employer interest.  A restrictive covenant is reasonable where (1) it’s no greater than necessary to protect the employer’s legitimate business interest, (2) it doesn’t impose an undue hardship on the employee, and (3) isn’t injurious to the public. (¶ 12).  But before the court analyzes these three factors, it must first determine whether the restrictive covenant is supported by consideration.

The reason for the consideration rule is because an employer’s promise of continued employment is often illusory in an at-will relationship since the employer can fire the employee at any time without warning.  Two years or more of continued employment constitutes adequate consideration in the non-compete setting and the two-year rule applies even where the employee resigns on his own instead of where he is fired.  (¶¶ 14-15).

Here, the defendant resigned 19 months after her employment commenced – five months short of the required two-year consideration period. As a result, the court declined to enforce the non-compete.

The court rejected plaintiff’s argument that it gave the defendant “additional consideration” in the form of marketing support and facilitating defendant’s hospital privileges. Looking at the evidence, the court found plaintiff gave defendant minimal assistance in obtaining hospital privileges and failed to introduce defendant to any referral sources as was promised. At the injunction hearing, plaintiff’s principal couldn’t name a single doctor to whom she introduced defendant during defendant’s time practicing at plaintiff’s office.  (¶¶ 18-19).

Afterwords:

This case cements rule that two years of continuous employment is required for there to be adequate consideration to enforce a post-employment non-compete term.  An employer can possibly get around this by offering additional consideration (i.e., something the employee is otherwise not entitled to).  But where the employer cannot offer evidence of the additional consideration, the two-year rule controls and will bar enforcement of the non-compete.

The Corporate Opportunity Doctrine: An Illinois Primer

I typically encounter a corporate opportunity issue (a claim that a defendant usurped a corporate opportunity) in situations where a former employee goes to work for a competitor and the ex-employer claims the employee is exploiting a business opportunity he learned of solely through his association with the employer.

The employer will usually sue for injunctive relief and money damages under a breach of fiduciary duty theory premised on the assertion that the employee violated the corporate opportunity doctrine. The employee typically defends by arguing that he didn’t compete with his former employer and that any business he now does is purely the product of his own initiative and was developed outside the confines of his prior position.

Illinois state and Federal cases through the decades have sharpened the doctrine’s contours to these fine points:

– A corporate officer has the duty to act with “utmost good faith and loyalty” in managing the company;

– A corporate officer breaches his fiduciary duties where (i) he tries to enhance his personal interests at the expense of the corporate interests, or (ii) he hinders his corporate employer’s ability to carry on its business;

– Where a corporate officer solicits business for his own benefit or uses his employer’s facilities or resources to further his personal interests without informing the company, he breaches his fiduciary duties to that company; the core principle of the doctrine is that a fiduciary will not be permitted to usurp an opportunity developed through the use of corporate assets;

 – A plaintiff alleging a defendant usurped a corporate opportunity must show that the company benefitting from the officer’s actions are in the same line of business as the plaintiff/employer; but the companies don’t have to be direct competitors;

 – A corporate opportunity exists when a proposed activity is reasonably incident to the corporation’s present or prospective business and is one in which the corporation has the capacity to engage;

– Where a corporate officer uses corporate assets to develop a business opportunity, he can’t then argue that his former employer lacked the ability to pursue that opportunity;

– Two key factors are: (1) whether the corporation had an actual or expected interest in the opportunity and (2) whether the acquisition of the questioned opportunity would impede the (ex-employer, e.g.) corporation’s ability to carry on its day-to-day business;

– Additional corporate opportunity factors include: (1) the manner in which the offer was communicated to the officer, (2) the good faith of the officer, (3) the use of corporate assets to acquire the opportunity, (4) the financial ability of the corporation to acquire the opportunity, (5) the degree of disclosure made to the corporation, (6) the action taken by the corporation in response to any disclosure, and (7) the need or interest of the corporation in the opportunity;

Case Examples Of Corporate Opportunity Breach

Corporate officers have been found in breach of their fiduciary duties when, while still employed by the company, they:

(i) failed to inform the company that employees are forming a rival company or engaging in other fiduciary breaches;

(ii) solicited the business of a customer before leaving the company;

(iii) used the company’s facilities or equipment to assist in developing their new business;

(iv) solicited fellow employees to join a rival business;

(v) used the company’s confidential business information for the new business; and

(vi) orchestrated a mass exodus of employees shortly after resigning from a company.

Afterwords: The above provides a good framework for handling a corporate opportunity breach. When representing a plaintiff in this type of case, I argue that the above factors weigh in favor of a finding of breach and will focus on any secret conduct of the defendant. The more clandestine, the better. 

Conversely, when defending a corporate opportunity suit, I stress that the opportunity was developed independently of my client’s former association with the plaintiff and that it (the opportunity) came to fruition by my client’s own efforts and not from the plaintiff’s resources.

Sources:

Drench, Inc. v. South Chapel Hill Gardens, Inc., 274 Ill.App.3d 534 (1st Dist. 1995);

Star Forge, Inc. v. Ward, 2014 IL App (2d) 130527-U;

Foodcomm Int’l v. Barry, 328 F.3d 300, 303 (7th Cir. 2003);

Lindenhurst Drugs, Inc. v. Becker, 154 Ill.App.3d 61, 68 (2d Dist. 1987)

No Disparagement Or Non-Compete Means No Injunction – IL Court

In Xylem Dewatering Solutions, Inc. v. Szablewski, 2014 IL App (5th) 140080-U,  the plaintiff corporation sued some of its ex-employees after they joined a competitor and started raiding plaintiff’s office staff.

The trial court denied plaintiff’s request for an injunction and then it appealed.

Result: Trial court’s order upheld. Plaintiff loses.

Reasons: To get a preliminary injunction, a plaintiff must establish (1) a clearly ascertained right in need of protection; (2) irreparable injury; (3) no adequate remedy at law; and (4) a likelihood of success on the merits.

The plaintiff must establish a “fair question” on each of the four elements. A preliminary injunction is an extraordinary remedy that is only granted in extreme, emergency settings. (¶¶ 20-21).

Irreparable harm can result from commercial disparagement of a plaintiff’s product but the plaintiff must show the defendant repeatedly made false or misleading statements of fact regarding the plaintiff’s goods and services to establish irreparable harm.  Statements of opinion (“their services suck!”, e.g.) don’t qualify as commercial disparagement. 

Here, the Court found that there were no repeated factual statements made by the defendants.  In addition, all statements that were attributed to the defendants were purely interpretive: they weren’t factual enough to be actionable.  (¶¶ 23-24).

In finding that the plaintiff lacked a protectable interest in its employees or customers, the court pointed out that neither individual defendant signed a non-compete and didn’t violate any fiduciary duties to the employer.

In Illinois, absent a non-compete, an employee is free both to compete with a former employer and to outfit a competing business so long as he doesn’t do so before his employment terminates.  And while a corporate officer owes heightened fiduciary duties not to exploit his position for personal gain, the ex-employee defendants were not corporate officers. (¶ 26).

Plaintiff also failed to establish a protectable interest in its pricing and bid information.  The Illinois Trade Secrets Act, 765 ILCS 1065/1 et seq. (“ITSA”) extends trade secret protection to “information” that is (1) sufficiently secret to derive economic value, from not being generally known to others who can obtain economic value from its use, and (2) that is the subject of reasonable efforts to maintain the information’s secrecy (i.e., “kept under lock and key”)

Information that is generally known in an industry – even if not to the public at large – isn’t a trade secret. Also, information that can be readily copied without a significant outlay of time, effort or expense is not a trade secret. 

The pricing data the plaintiff was trying to protect was several years old and the defendants testified that the bidding information was well known (and therefore not secret) in the pumping industry.  In combination, these factors weighed against a finding of trade secret protection for the pricing and bidding information. (¶¶ 29-31).

Afterwords:

(1) Stale data likely won’t qualify for trade secret status – no matter how arcane the information;

(2) If information is well known or can be easily accessed within an industry, it won’t be given trade secret protection;

(3) Noncompete agreements can serve vital purposes.  If a business fails to have its workers sign them, the business risks having no recourse if an ex-employee joins a competitor and later raids the former employer’s personnel.