Supreme Court of Kentucky Finds Continued Employment Is Insufficient Consideration for Non-Compete

The enforcement of non-competes is most troublesome in the at-will employment context. This is a recurring topic on this blog, and countless others. Courts have taken divergent approaches to analyzing the consideration issue.

Generally, the rules concerning enforcement of covenants for at-will employees fall into one of three categories:

(1) Continued employment is sufficient to enforce a covenant not to compete against an at-will employee if she signs it after the start of employment. This may be the majority rule, although I haven't broken it down state-by-state.

(2) Continued employment is insufficient to bind an at-will employee to a newly presented covenant not to compete unless the employee receives some true, real advantage in connection with signing the contract. A substantial minority of states, including Minnesota, adopt some variant of this rule.

(3) Even if an at-will employee signs a non-compete at the start of her employment, continued employment is insufficient unless the employment continues for a substantial period of time. This is Illinois' outlier Fifield rule.

Recently, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals certified a legal question to the state supreme court for review, concluding that existing case law relating to consideration was hopelessly in conflict. And just last week, the Supreme Court of Kentucky weighed in on the "continued employment" rule - with an opinion that seems to be of little value.

The Court held that continued employment was insufficient consideration to enforce a covenant not to compete that an at-will employee signed. The case is Charles T. Creech, Inc. v. Brown. Ultimately, though, the opinion does not seem to provide any rules. Instead, the Court simply found that given the particular facts of the case, the relatively broad non-compete lacked consideration. That in and of itself seemed odd, since the parties didn't conduct must discovery.

Although the opinion has flaws, it's still useful for what the Court determined to be significant in regards to the consideration inquiry. It honed in on the following factors:

(1) The employer undertook no new obligations in the contract.
(2) The contract lacked any indicia of an employment agreement, such as provisions relating to salary, benefits, and conditions of discharge.
(3) Brown, the employee, was a 16-year employee with pre-existing experience in the industry, meaning he didn't receive specialized training in response to signing the non-compete.
(4) Brown was not promoted and did not sign the agreement in connection with any real new advantages, such as a bump in pay or some access to new training or new information. The employer seemed to demote him.
(5) Most unusually, the employer did not threaten Brown with termination if he refused to sign the agreement. (It's hard to see how a counterfactual would be more persuasive evidence of consideration.)

While the result in the employee's favor may be appropriate given the other problems with the non-compete, the opinion does nothing more than leave a murky area of the law even cloudier. The Court gave no rule - and only hinted at a standard. Therefore, employers still don't have clarification on what they would need to provide at-will employees in the way of proper consideration to support a non-compete covenant.

The best practice still is to afford an at-will employee with some real, tangible advantage that a court will be able to grasp. The concept of continued employment is somewhat nebulous and in certain circumstances illusory. It makes enforcement difficult, particularly with long-term employees. Potential benefits could include:

(1) A raise, bonus, or promotion.
(2) The ability to terminate only for cause.
(3) Severance if the employer must terminate without cause.

In many states, any one of these would vest a non-compete with consideration. In my view, it also is beneficial to include the covenants in a more robust contract of employment, as opposed to a stand-alone document.

Anti-SLAPP Motions and Private Contract Disputes

One of the burgeoning issues in employee competition disputes is the applicability (or inapplicability) of state Anti-SLAPP statutes.

These statutes generally provide an expedited mechanism for an individual who is sued for petitioning the government or exercising her free speech rights to dismiss a retaliatory suit and obtain damages or attorneys' fees. Increasingly, individuals are using Anti-SLAPP statutes in the context of competition claims that employers bring.

I previously have discussed special problems that arise in the context of so-called "whistleblowers" and the intersection of trade secret law. Although this may provide a compelling factual scenario for the application of Anti-SLAPP motions, individual defendants generally have met with a fair amount of resistance in their efforts to use this statutory mechanism to cut off trade secrets claims.

By and large, Anti-SLAPP laws require a petitioning defendant (assumed here to be an ex-employee sued on some competition-related claim) to show that his or her activity involved a matter of public concern or public interest. For instance, the Court of Appeals of Washington recently found that an ex-employee's post to a job board that warned potential employees about his ex-employer's security practices did not involve a matter of sufficient public concern to invoke that state's Anti-SLAPP law. Alaska Structures, Inc. v. Hedlund, 2014 Wash. App. LEXIS 933 (Wash. Ct. App. Apr. 21, 2014).

Generally speaking, courts seem adverse to applying Anti-SLAPP laws to matters that involve private contract disputes, such as a claim for breach of a non-disclosure agreement. This is not to say fact patterns that overlap with a competition claim can't arise, but the employee's conduct generally must implicate some or all of the following:

• The matter must be of interest of concern to a substantial number of people. An example would be a disclosure about an issue concerning consumer product safety;
• There must be a close tie between the employee's statements, disclosures, or conduct and the public interest itself. For instance, an employee's disclosure of material must be directed towards the public good and not purely for some personal gain.
• The individual's conduct should not be mere ammunition-gathering in a fight with her ex-employer. There must be some objective indication the employee is pursuing a matter of larger public concern.

I am not totally unsympathetic towards individuals' efforts to use Anti-SLAPP laws, but there is a disturbing overuse of these laws in private competition disputes. While an aggressive counterattack can shift the narrative of the case, it also has the potential to backfire and force parties to double-down in litigation. I do believe there is a greater role courts should play in scrutinizing competition cases that appear to be motivated out of pure spite or for no justifiable effort to recover something of value (that is, something that clearly outweighs the costs of litigation itself). But the Anti-SLAPP laws should be a rarely invoked tool in the judicial toolkit.

Unreasonable Settlement Demands Illustrate Bad Faith In Trade Secrets Cases

Most attorneys believe everything said in a settlement letter is privileged through the Rules of Evidence.

This is decidedly not so.

The purpose of the evidentiary privilege is to preclude a jury from concluding that an offer to resolve a case suggests liability (on the part of the defendant) or weakness (on the part of the plaintiff). In trade secrets disputes, though, settlement statements that rise to the level of specious demands are not protected because they don't pose a risk of prejudicing a jury.

Trade secrets cases can go south in a hurry unless a plaintiff has done serious homework. And even if there has been a misappropriation, many times the plaintiff will have no shot at proving damages. That, however, does not preclude a plaintiff from making an outrageous demand. There are a number of courts that have assessed unreasonable settlement positions in the context of bad faith fee petitions for prevailing defendants.

An interesting, though non-precedential, decision from the Court of Appeal of California in Aerotek, Inc. v. The Johnson Group Staffing Co., Inc., affirmed a bad faith fee award of over $700,000. The court specifically looked at unreasonable settlement demands the plaintiff made, including a demand following a loss at trial, as evidence of bad faith.

Also of interest to the court:

• An expert's apparent unawareness that one of the customers on which he based his lost profits calculation was no longer in business; and
• A third-party witness's testimony that a plaintiff representative talked about the plaintiff's deep pockets and intent to shut the defendant's business down.

The interesting part of the case was the fact that the plaintiff actually won at the first trial, and the defendant stipulated that the customer list at issue was in fact a trade secret. Under such facts, its unusual to see a court find bad faith on the part of the plaintiff in bringing the case.

However, in California, there already is a strong public policy favoring open competition. Judges tend to view these cases more skeptically to begin with, and a case that might appear somewhat close still can yield a bad faith finding in California. Ultimately, it was clear that the plaintiff in Aerotek had a foundering case and doubled down. Maintaining a bad case will not endear any plaintiff's lawyer to the judge.

What Happens In Bankruptcy...Does Not Necessarily Stay in Bankruptcy.

The unfortunate reality of many non-compete lawsuits is that the parties face a vast asymmetry in legal resources. While individuals suing companies in court is hardly a novel concept, an individual usually stands something to gain - money - if she wins. A non-compete defendant is in no such similar position.

As a result, bankruptcy looms as a potential "option" for defendants in a good percentage of non-compete cases. Most defendants don't realize that there's a significant chance that a damages award may not even be dischargeable, though this depends on a host of factors. Blanket statements or conclusions can't be made.

Another vexing issue is a company's ability to pursue injunctive relief to protect customer goodwill or confidential information, even if a non-compete defendant has filed a bankruptcy petition. The most obvious step for companies to take is to file a lift-stay motion. This refers to the fact that all litigation against a debtor is "stayed" (or halted) once he or she files a petition.

Bankruptcy laws serve to relieve an honest debtor from the weight of his financial obligations and give him a fresh start in business life. Injunctive relief, though, is not a matter that impacts the administration of a bankruptcy estate, so courts often confront a company's attempt to lift the stay so that it may seek to pursue an injunction and protect against the loss of customers or trade secrets. Because damages are difficult to prove, injunctive relief still is the preferred remedy for most non-compete plaintiffs.

Since bankruptcy laws do not give a debtor a shield to misappropriate assets or customer relationships, under what circumstances will a court grant an employer's lift-stay motion and allow it to proceed forward with its case outside of bankruptcy?

There are several factors courts have examined in the past, though there is no uniform set of rules:

(1) Likelihood of success - This seems rather obvious, but it poses serious challenges for bankruptcy judges. If a bankruptcy judge weighs in on the merits (even if it's not a decision or judgment), then there is a substantial risk that the court hearing the underlying dispute will be influenced by another judge's thoughts. This is a particularly acute concern when the non-compete case is in state court.

(2) Prejudice to debtor - The most obvious hardship is the cost of litigation. However, in the past, bankruptcy courts haven't found that this practical reality is a significant prejudice factor that would justify a denial of relief.

(3) Prejudice to the estate - In a garden-variety employee matter, the bankruptcy estate rarely has an interest in the non-competition covenant. Put another way, the contract is not an estate asset.

(4) Harm to the moving party - In the decisions addressing lift-stay motions, most courts find that the potential harm to the ex-employer (i.e., loss of customers or impairment of trade secret rights) is the most important factor to consider. Courts seem receptive to the notion that it is impermissible to use the bankruptcy laws offensively to continue violating unexpired restrictive covenants.

It also is important to keep in mind that considerations of lifting a stay are different in Chapter 11 or 13 cases when enforcement of a covenant not to compete may affect a debtor's ability to reorganize and earn income. However, in a typical Chapter 7 case, a bankruptcy court is unconcerned with a debtor's ability to generate post-petition earnings because those earnings are not estate property.

An Illinois Federal Court Now Pivots Towards Supporting Fifield

I wrote previously about the hostile reception Fifield v. Premier Dealer Services, Inc. had received in Illinois federal courts, which is set forth in my March 6 post "Fifield, Federal Style." Since that time, I have presented at two seminars in which I predicted that a fissure between how state and federal courts perceived the Fifield consideration rule may encourage the Supreme Court of Illinois to take the issue up when it inevitably resurfaces.

Perhaps, I am wrong.

One federal judge in Chicago has disagreed with his federal court counterparts and endorsed Fifield. The case is Instant Technology, LLC v. DeFazio, No. 12-cv-491. Judge Holderman declined to follow the lead of Chief Judge Castillo in Montel Aetnastak, Inc. v. Miessen (and Judge Feinerman in another case) and found that the Supreme Court of Illinois would, indeed, follow the two-year consideration rule from Fifield.

As readers of this blog know all too well by now, Fifield holds that for at-will employees new or continued employment must last at least two years for the employment to serve as consideration supporting a non-compete agreement. It's clear from Fifield that this two-year rule applies to both non-compete and non-solicit covenants, but it almost certainly does not extend to confidentiality restrictions.

Judge Holderman relied on Judge Posner's opinion in Curtis 1000, Inc. v. Suess to justify why Fifield represents the law in Illinois. That case discussed the fact that employment in the at-will context often is illusory because the employer retains full discretion to take away the consideration without fear of liability. Also important to Judge Holderman's analysis were two recent Illinois circuit court decisions that appeared to endorse Fifield. It's rather unusual to see a federal court rely on and cite to unreported trial court cases as support for a ruling. But such is the terra (in)firma that Fifield graced us with.

As I recently wrote, the Supreme Court of Wisconsin is addressing an important question of law concerning consideration for non-competes in the at-will employee context.