Back from Hiatus (Part II): State Law Updates

Last week, I discussed three examples of Illinois courts analyzing similar non-compete issues in very different ways, a post that amply illustrates how difficult it is for lawyers to predict outcomes for clients. It also reminded me of a famous Abraham Lincoln quote: "Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. Point out to them how the nominal winner is often a real loser - in fees, expenses, and waste of time. As a peacemaker the lawyer has a superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough."

But to be sure, many people ignore Lincoln and litigate anyway - often with profoundly silly reasons motivating them.

So because we have litigation, we have legal developments and I therefore have a blog that continues to chug along. And you continue to read, meaning I must update you with some new rulings over the past several months.

California:

The infamous, long-running case involving ex-Korn/Ferry International executive David Nosal may have reached its end, with the Supreme Court declining a cert petition and the District Court now having finally decided on the scope of Nosal's restitution to KFI. United States v. Nosal is the most notable case under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which generally criminalizes unauthorized access to protected computers. Nosal had its roots as a garden-variety trade secret case, but it was a criminal prosecution and tested the CFAA's limits.

Ultimately, Nosal secured some victories along the way. But still he will serve a year in prison and pay restitution to KFI. As to the scope of restitution, KFI sought about $1,000,000 in legal fees incurred to assist the Department of Justice investigation. After the Ninth Circuit weighed in KFI, will have to settle for less: $164,000. Still a heavy price to pay for Nosal, who probably deserved a civil suit but definitely does not deserve to spend a year in prison.

Connecticut:

The case of Datto, Inc. v. Falk discussed whether a forfeiture-for-competition clause was reasonable and enforceable. A minority of jurisdictions apply the same, or at least a similar, non-compete standard to these clauses, which (as one might expect) enable an employer to clawback certain benefits if an employee leaves to compete.

Forfeiture clauses range in scope, frequently calling for the forfeiture of unvested stock options but sometimes also calling for the employee to pay back income earned from the exercise of a grant within a certain period before the end of employment. Datto involved a dispute as to whether the cancellation of certain stock options were void because Falk (an ex-Chief Revenue Officer) accepted a position with a competitor.

The court was bound to apply Delaware law on the question of reasonableness, and that law in my view is somewhat confusing. Precedent, in effect, equated true non-competes with forfeiture clauses, finding they accomplished the same results. That's not necessarily true. A forfeiture clause may incent future performance, while a non-compete unquestionably tries to protect a separate economic interest beyond employee loyalty.

Datto illustrates the confusion in its analysis, though the district court judge admittedly was bound by controlling law. He noted, for instance, that the forfeiture clause was reasonable because "[t]his is not a case of an employee who is barred altogether from working for the competition anywhere in the world."

In my opinion, courts ought to use varying levels of scrutiny when examining restraints, similar to the current First Amendment jurisprudence. Specifically, I think that for employment-based non-competes, courts should use the strict scrutiny test (which by and large, they say they do), and for sale-of-business non-competes, they should examine them under a rational basis inquiry.

For mid-tier restrictions, like franchise non-competes and forfeiture clauses like that in Datto, I would use intermediate scrutiny. That test would require courts to determine whether the restrictive means used (e.g., the scope of the event triggering the forfeiture) are substantially related to the interest the restraint is designed to protect. This test, though it may not be perfect, would at least provide courts with a flexible, coherent way to analyze less problematic covenants that lack adhesive properties.

New York:

The New York Court of Appeals answered a significant question of damages related to trade secrets claims in the case of E.J. Brooks v. Cambridge Security Seals. The Court held that a plaintiff's damages cannot be measured by the costs the defendant avoided due to unlawful activity.

If a principal goal of trade secret law is to encourage innovation, then a cost-avoidance theory of damages seems to be a logical means to further that goal. Stated another way, if the misappropriation shortens a product-development cycle and enables X to bring a product to market more efficiently, then X is unjustly enriched by not incurring research-and-development expenses.

In the Court's view, cost-avoidance is inconsistent with a compensatory theory of damages. And under New York law, only the plaintiff's losses count. Cost-avoidance theory resembles unjust enrichment, but because New York has not adopted some variation of the Uniform Trade Secrets Act -- which specifically allows for unjust enrichment-type damages -- the theory is not viable.

The holding, predictably, spurred a long and persuasive dissent. It summarized the pragmatism and utility of cost-avoidance damages, noting that they are "generally much simpler than, and less subject to challenge than, lost-profit damages, which makes them an attractive alternative for plaintiffs who are willing to forego a potentially larger recovery in favor of a smaller, more certain one." (The assumption of a "smaller" recovery reasonably invokes the principle that a developer does not spend X to recover X. Normally, a rational economic actor would spend X to recover some multiple of X.)

A link to E.J. Brooks is available here. I emphasize again that I view this as a distinctly New York rule of law, and not one likely to be adopted across jurisdictions that have embraced a more flexible approach to damages.

South Carolina:

In Hartsock v. Goodyear Dunlop Tires North America, Ltd., the Supreme Court of South Carolina recognized an evidentiary privilege for trade secrets, but held the privilege was "qualified." That means it is different than, say, an attorney-client privilege or one barring self-incrimination. By "qualified," the Court held that a party seeking the disclosure of trade-secret material must show a "substantial need" for it that is relevant to the specific issues involved in the litigation. If a proponent makes that showing, the trade-secret holder still can gain the benefit of a protective order over the compelled disclosure.

The decision is, to be certain, a weird one. This is not really a privilege rule, but rather a rule of discovery that calls upon courts to make a balancing decision. If anything, this rule will create confusion where none should exist.

Texas:

Everything is bigger in Texas, including damages and attorneys' fee judgments. In the long-running case of Quantlab Technologies v. Godlevsky, a federal district court awarded the plaintiff its attorneys' fees in a trade secrets suit for what the court called defense behavior that was "so acrimonious, vexatious, and indefensible that...[it] exceeds any that this judge has seen in his nineteen years on the bench." The case involved stolen technology in the high-frequency trading industry, and the court at various times had sanctioned the defendants for destroying or failing to preserve evidence.

The price for that behavior was a fee judgment of $3,220,205 against each individual defendant.

The plaintiff didn't fare so well in GE Betz v. Moffitt-Johnston. There, the Fifth Circuit held that under Texas law, a company failed prove than ex-employee breached a customer non-solicitation covenant. The employee succeeded despite "highly suspicious" computer activity, including the mass download of data to an external device. But the company couldn't prove that any contacts with customers amounted to solicitation of business, rendering the contract claim unsupportable.

The Fifth Circuit did, however, vacate a large fee award for the ex-employee. Texas law allows an employee sued on a non-compete violation to obtain fees if the employer knows the agreement is overbroad and sues to enforce the agreement to an extent greater than necessary to protect the employer's interests. That's a hard standard to meet, absent some damaging admission or a truly terrible agreement. And the employee here didn't do so.