COURT ORDER, NOT RESIGNATION, SHOULD START CLOCK ON NONCOMPETE INJUNCTION
The time period of an injunction against a former employee who violated a noncompete agreement should run from the date the trial court issued the order, not the date the employee resigned from the company, the Pennsylvania Superior Court has ruled, looking to the federal court in New Jersey for guidance.
In a non-precedential Nov. 17 ruling, the appeals court affirmed a Montgomery County judge’s grant of Tyco Fire Products’ request for an injunction against Ralph M. Fuchs, a former senior sales manager at Tyco who worked at the company for a decade before accepting a job at Reliable Automatic Sprinkler Co. in 2016.
The trial court, citing a non-compete agreement Fuchs signed, enjoined him from working in any sales capacity for a competitor for a year, forbade him from interacting with Tyco customers for two years, and ordered him to return any proprietary information from Tyco back to the company.
Among Fuchs’ arguments on appeal was that the trial court’s decision to set the start date of the injunction as the date the order was issued, rather than the date Fuchs resigned from Tyco, was an abuse of discretion.
Writing for a unanimous, three-judge panel, Superior Court Judge John Bender said the panel found persuasive the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey’s ruling in Jackson Hewitt v. Childress, which held that ex-employee should not receive credit for time spent in violation of a valid non-compete agreement.
“What is particularly important is that finally the Superior Court has ruled that specifically a court of common please can issue an injunction from the date of the employee’s departure,” Tillery said.
Reference: P.J. D’Annunzio, Pennsylvania Law Weekly, 40 PLW 1091, November 28, 2017
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