The recently passed Act to Promote Keeping Workers in Maine is poised to dramatically alter the status of restrictive covenants in Maine. The Act accomplishes this by: (1) prohibiting employers from entering into no-poach agreements with one another; (2) barring employers from entering into noncompetes with lower wage employees; (3) limiting employers’ ability to enforce
Maryland recently joined the ranks of states with laws limiting the enforcement of non-compete agreements against low wage workers. Maryland’s recently enacted law (SB 328) bars employers from enforcing non-compete agreements against workers earning less than or equal to $15 per hour or $31,200 per annum.
In a nod to employers, the statute
The State of Utah on March 22, 2019 returned to the topic of non-competes for the third time in three years. It had passed that statute in 2016 (as we noted), and then amended in 2018 (as we also discussed here earlier), and now is at it again, by amending it
Many physicians and other health care workers are familiar with restrictive covenants like non-competition and/or non-solicitation agreements, either as employees who have been asked to sign such covenants as a condition of their employment or as business owners seeking to enforce such covenants to protect their medical practices from competition. These covenants are usually designed
On May 10, 2018, the New Jersey Assembly Labor Committee advanced Assembly Bill A1769, a bill that seeks to provide stricter requirements for the enforcement of restrictive covenants.
If enacted, the legislation would permit employers to enter into non-competes with employees as a condition of employment or within a severance agreement, but such non-competes
Whenever possible, restrictive covenants should be carefully worded to track the language of applicable law in the jurisdiction where they will be enforced. The South Dakota Supreme Court’s recent decision in Farm Bureau Life Insurance Co. v. Dolly provides a strong reminder of this lesson. The case concerned an action by Farm Bureau to enforce
Two western states, Utah and Idaho, have recently passed or amended their statutes dealing with post-employment restrictions on competition. This continues a national trend in which new state law in this area is increasingly the product of legislative action rather than judicial interpretation. Thus, even if an employer has no current presence in these states,
Earlier this month, Colorado amended its law governing physician non-compete agreements (C.R.S. § 8-2-113(3)). Since its enactment in 1982, that statute generally has prohibited agreements restricting the rights of physicians to practice medicine, but has allowed contractual provisions requiring a physician to pay damages arising from his or her competition if the
A little-noticed decision from earlier this year rendered by the Supreme Court of New York, Westchester County, demonstrates how enforcement of post-employment restrictive covenants will often boil down to a single question: does the restriction protect a legitimate business interest of the employer?
In Cindy Hoffman, D.O., P.C. v. Raftopol, plaintiff applied for a
The Colorado Court of Appeals, in Crocker v. Greater Colorado Anesthesia, P.C., recently examined several unique enforceability considerations with respect to a physician non-compete agreement. Of particular interest was the Court’s treatment of a liquidated damages provision in the agreement. Pursuant to a Colorado statute (8-2-113(3), C.R.S. 2017), the Court held that the provision