More Rejection by Illinois Courts of Bright-Line Consideration Rule

The federal courts have become the final frontier for Illinois employers looking to enforce non-compete agreements against at-will employees. Those agreements contain embedded consideration problems if the gap between signing and termination dates is less than two years and if the employer cannot point to some other form of consideration beyond the job itself.

With the recent district court decision in Allied Waste Servs. of N. Am. v. Tibble, there is firm momentum in federal court to move away from the two-year, bright-line rule that two of the five appellate courts have established. The Supreme Court of Illinois twice has refused to weigh in on the matter, apparently content to let this issue play out in the other appellate districts.

Allied Waste breaks no new ground and largely follows the reasoning of other federal district courts, the most persuasive of which is Judge McDade's thoughtful opinion in Cumulus Radio Corp. v. Olson. The essence of these cases is that consideration is too fact-intensive for bright-line rules and that courts should consider the totality of the circumstances (e.g., method of termination, length of at-will employment, conditions of employment).

Indeed, one could argue that Allied Waste is not all that relevant, since it appears the account executive also received a salary bump, greater bonus potential, and promotion in conjunction with his non-compete agreement. Put differently, this really wasn't a classic case in the mold of Fifield and the other disputes that truly center on "continued employment as consideration."

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Having now read and thought about these consideration cases for nearly three years, I am warming to an alternative way of thinking of how the consideration question could be resolved. I developed three rules of thumb, which are more or less working concepts and not specific proposals at this point. They seek to balance important interests related to contract formation with the need to avoid bright-line rules, which remove the important function of judicial discretion.

First, if the contract recites the consideration granted for the restrictive covenant, then it should control and the employer may not introduce evidence to contradict (or even supplement) its own agreement. This requires no more than a plain reading of the agreement and informs how the court will proceed with further analysis over the consideration issue.

Second, if the contract is silent or ambiguous as to consideration, then a court may consider extrinsic evidence of specific consideration that would support the agreement. Here, the employer would need to identify something tangible and concrete as opposed to an after-the-fact reconstruction of an individual's employment status that may not have anything to do with consideration for the restrictive covenant.

Third, if the consideration is continued employment and the employee is terminated, then the court should find as a matter of law that the consideration is illusory. This should be an obvious, black-letter principle that poses none of the problems sometimes associated with bright-line rules.

Fourth, courts should conduct limited evidentiary hearings to resolve consideration questions at the earliest possible moment, much like they do now with jurisdictional discovery. The issue of contract formation is essential and requires prompt resolution in a way that is divorced from the other issues that attend non-compete disputes. If the court finds that the consideration given was not adequate in light of the specific restraints, then the court should enter a judgment on the contract in the employee's favor immediately. In this regard, employers who use very broad restraints but only support themwith nominal or potentially meaningless consideration (like continued employment) likely will suffer an early defeat before broad expensive discovery begins.