Tag: non-solicitation

Fed. Court ‘Blue Pencils’ Telecom Employer’s Overbroad Nonsolicitation Term – IL ND

In Call One, Inc. v. Anzine, 2018 WL 2735089 (N.D.Ill. 2018), the Northern District of Illinois provides a useful gloss on Illinois restrictive covenant law in the context of a trade secrets action filed by a call center employer against a long-time employee.

The defendant worked for the plaintiff as a sales representative for 15 years. About a decade into her employment tenure, the defendant signed a non-compete agreement which, among other things, prevented her from soliciting plaintiff’s “prospective customers” for a 12-month post-employment period.

After talks for defendant to become an independent distributor of the plaintiff broke down and defendant quit her job, plaintiff sued when it learned defendant altered a Customer Report and e-mailed it to her personal email account. The defendant countersued for a declaration that the non-solicitation clause was overbroad.

Granting summary judgment for the ex-employee on her counterclaim, the Northern District judge set forth applicable Illinois law on restrictive covenants.

  • Restrictive covenants are scrutinized carefully since they are restraints of trade. The key inquiry is whether a given restriction is reasonable and necessary to protect a legitimate business interest of the employer.
  • A post-employment restrictive covenant is reasonable only where (1) it is no greater than necessary for the protection of a legitimate business interest of an employer, (2) does not impose an undue hardship on the employee, and (3) is not injurious to the public.
  • When determining whether an employer has met the legitimate business interest test – prong (1) above – the court considers whether an employer enjoys near-permanent relationships with its customers, whether the employee acquired confidential information during her employment and time and place restrictions contained in the subject covenant.
  • Courts are reluctant to prohibit former employee’s from servicing customers they never had contact with while working for an employer.

Applying these factors, the court found that the non-solicitation term excessive. It specifically viewed the restriction broader than necessary to protect Plaintiff’s ongoing client relationships.

According to the court, to prevent defendant from soliciting anyone who was ever a customer of plaintiff over the past 15 years was facially overbroad and not necessary to protect plaintiff’s current customer relationships. Another reason the court found the non-solicitation provision too expansive was it prevented defendant from contacting plaintiff’s clients with whom she never had any direct contact and didn’t even know about.

The agreement also contained a severability or “blue pencil” provision. Such a provision allows a court to modify an overbroad restrictive covenant in some settings.

Here, because the 12-month non-solicitation provision was chronologically reasonable in scope, the Court reformed the covenant to only prevent defendant from contacting any entity (a) who was a current and prospective customer of plaintiff as of defendant’s January 2018 termination date and (b) for which defendant had responsibility at the time of her separation.

The Court also granted summary judgment for the defendant on plaintiff’s claim premised on the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016, the statute that gives a trade secrets plaintiff access to Federal courts. To prove a Federal trade secrets act claim, the plaintiff must establish (a) the existence of a trade secret, and (b) misappropriation.

Misappropriation includes unauthorized disclosure of a trade secret by a person who used improper means to acquire knowledge of the trade secret and unauthorized disclosure of a trade secret by a person who knew or had reason to know that knowledge of the trade secret was “acquired under circumstances giving rise to a duty to maintain the secrecy of the trade secret.” 18 U.S.C. ss. 1839(5)(B)(i)-(ii).

Plaintiff failed to adduce evidence that defendant owed a duty to protect the confidentiality of the Customer Report when it was never labelled as confidential.  As a result, no reasonable jury could find defendant acquired the Report through improper means by breaching a duty to maintain its secrecy.

Afterwords:

An employer suing a former employee for violating a restrictive covenant must demonstrate the existence of near-permanent customer relationships or confidential information. As long as the time and space limitation is objectively reasonable, a court can edit and contract the scope of a post-employment restriction.

Where an employer cannot demonstrate that an employee had a duty to maintain the secrecy of the information the employer is trying to protect, it likely can’t establish Federal trade secrets misappropriation.

The plaintiff’s elaborate information security policies worked against it here. By failing to label the subject Report as confidential (which was required per the employee handbook), the Court refused to find the Report sufficiently confidential to impose a duty on the defendant to keep it secret.

Facebook Announcement Doesn’t Equal Improper Client Solicitation: Mass. Court

In Invidia v. DiFonzo, 30 Mass. L.Rptr 390 (2012), a hair salon sued a former stylist for breaching a non-compete and non-solicitation clause in her employment agreement.  The Court examined whether the new employer’s posting a job change on defendant’s Facebook page and “friending” former clients was improper solicitation.

The employment contract contained a non-compete spanning two years and 10 miles and a two-year non-solicitation clause.  After she resigned, the defendant went to work for a competing salon less than two miles away.  Her new employer then posted an announcement on its Facebook page, promoting defendant’s new affiliation with the competing salon. 

The plaintiff saw the Facebook activity and sued.  The Court denied the request for injunctive relief because plaintiff failed to show a likelihood of success on the merits or irreparable harm.

Rules/Reasoning:

A preliminary injunction plaintiff must show (1) likelihood of success on the merits; (2) irreparable harm if the injunction is denied; and (3) the risk of irreparable harm to the movant outweighs similar risk of harm to the opposing party.  *2. 

Massachusetts courts scrutinize non-competition agreements because they often result from unequal bargaining power.  A covenant not to compete is enforceable only if it’s necessary to protect a legitimate business interest, is reasonably limited in time and space, and supported by the public interest.  *4.

The Non-Compete Provision

The salon plaintiff failed to show that it was likely to succeed on the merits on the noncompete because it was questionable whether a two-year/10-mile restriction was necessary to protect plaintiff’s interest and because plaintiff failed to show that its “legitimate business interest” – the goodwill which plaintiff claimed it lost – belonged entirely to plaintiff.  *5.  

The Court noted that in the hairdressing business, goodwill often belongs to the individual stylist rather than the salon.  That is, customers likely patronize a salon for a specific hairdresser; not because they like the salon itself. 

The Court also found the plaintiff failed to show irreparable harm, since plaintiff could clearly quantify its damages.  The Court pointed out that plaintiff offered evidence of the number of clients that it lost since defendant left (90) and the average dollar amount spent ($87.16) by each lost client.  This militated against a finding of irreparable harm.  *5.

The Non-Solicitation Clause

Turning to the non-solicitation clause, the Court found that the Facebook announcement of defendant’s affiliation with the new salon (by that salon) did not equate to active solicitation.*5.  

Nor did the defendant’s sending  friend requests to eight clients of plaintiff amount to a breach of the non-solicitation provision. 

The employer did however have some circumstantial evidence in support of its solicitation argument.  It offered documents at the injunction hearing that demonstrated that some 90 salon clients had cancelled (without rescheduling) appointments in the two-plus months since defendant’s departure. *6.  Yet the Court wasn’t prepared to find this a breach of the anti-solicitation provision.  The Court stressed that no current or former clients testified that defendant contacted them and solicited their business.

Take-aways: A third party’s passive Facebook posting and direct Facebook friends requests are not enough to establish solicitation for preliminary injunction purposes.  Instead, there must be direct evidence of active solicitation to merit injunctive relief.

 

 

 

Successor Corporation Can’t Enforce Expired Restrictive Covenants

 

Stericycle, Inc. v. Carney, 2013 WL 3671288 (N.D.Ill. 2013) is post-worthy for its useful  gloss on the enforceability of restrictive covenants, Federal pleading requirements and a purchasing corporation’s standing to assert the restrictive covenant rights of its predecessor.

Facts:  In 2007 and 2008, defendant signed employment agreements (the “SEI Agreements”) with SEI, his former employer.  The SEI Agreements contained 2-year non-disclosure and non-solicitation provisions. Plaintiff Stericycle acquired SEI in 2009 as part of a stock purchase. 

Defendant later signed separate employment agreements (the “Stericycle Agreements”) in 2009 and 2011.  In late 2011, defendant resigned and within a month went to work for a competitor in the waste management business. Plaintiff then filed suit to enforce the SEI Agreements and the Stericycle Agreements.

Disposition: Plaintiff’s claims dismissed.  The Court granted the defendants’ 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss plaintiff breach of contract claims based on the SEI Agreements with prejudice (claims can’t be refiled) and the Stericycle Agreements without prejudice (claims can be refiled).

Reasoning: The Court dismissed the SEI Agreements because there the two-year restrictive covenants contained in them expired by their terms.  The record demonstrated that that defendant stopped working for SEI in January 2009 and didn’t begin working for his current employer, an SEI competitor, until October 2011 – well past the two-year restrictive period. 

But putting aside the expiration of the contractual two-year restrictions, the Court did hold that the plaintiff – the successor entity – had standing to enforce the SEI Agreements.  That’s because they expressly provided that their restrictive covenants were enforceable by SEI’s successors and assigns.  And since plaintiff was a successor to SEI, plaintiff had standing to sue on the SEI Agreements. 

 The Court also struck plaintiff’s claims which alleged defendant’s breach of the Stericycle Agreements.  The Court found plaintiff’s allegations too conclusory – even under Federal notice pleading rules – to allege that defendant breached the Stericycle Agreements’ non-disclosure terms.  

Plaintiff pled no facts to plausibly suggest that  defendant violated the non-disclosure provisions. The Court also held that to adequately plead breach of a non-compete covenant, the plaintiff must do more than simply say that defendant’s current position is similar to his former position at plaintiff. 

On the issue of whether the Stericycle Agreements’ were enforceable, the Northern Disrtrict stated it couldn’t decide this based only on the complaint’s allegations. 

It cited basic Illinois rules on restrictive covenants: (1) a restrictive covenant will be upheld if it’s a reasonable restraint and supported by consideration; and (2) will be found reasonable only where (a) it’s no greater than necessary to protect the employer’s legitimate business interest; (b) it doesn’t impose an undue hardship on the employee; and (c) the restriction doesn’t injure the public.  

The Court found there were too many fact questions – such as the covenants’ geographic reach and what business interest plaintiff was trying to protect – that couldn’t be resolved on a  bare complaint (i.e. without any discovery) and declined to find the Stericycle Agreements’ restrictions unreasonable.  

 Take-aways:

(1) The Federal notice pleading standard has some teeth: Plaintiff must do more than regurgitate a cause of action’s elements and must also allege specific facts in support of a given claim;

(2) A successor corporation can enforce a restrictive covenant contained in a predecessor’s employment contract where that contract provides that it’s enforceable by a successor or assignee; and

(3) whether a restrictive covenant is reasonable (and enforceability) will most likely not be decided only on a complaint before discovery is taken.