Hi. My name is Alex Granovsky, the Managing Member of Granovsky&Sundaresh. We’re a law firm that specializes in labor employment law. One of the most frequent questions we get asked is whether certain conduct will cause one of our clients to be sued for a breach of a non-compete agreement. We helped tons of clients with this exact issue. Typically speaking, whether or not you’re going to get sued for breach of a non-compete can be answered by analyzing one factor: money. If you go from Company A to Company B causes company A to lose money and that loss is directly attributable to you, then it’s more likely that you’ll be sued.
A non-compete might make that lawsuit harder or easier to win, as the case may be, but that’s not what motivates the lawsuit. What motivates the lawsuit is the money. Now, in terms of how the lifecycle of these things work. Pretty, pretty typical. And the first step is usually a cease and desist letter. A cease and desist letter is a threatening letter telling you stop what you’re doing immediately. Oftentimes that’s where this ends. The intent of a cease and desist letter is to get the employee to stop what they’re doing and change their conduct, but it is at very little cost and almost no risk to the employer. Right? They’re not going to court, they’re not testing their non-compete – nothing is happening. Usually matters are settled at the cease and desist phase.
If not, the company wants to take it further. Sometimes an employer will apply for what’s called an injunction. An injunction is a court order forcing or prohibiting somebody from doing something. In the case of a non-compete, presumably they would be prohibiting an employee from working for a certain company. Typically, when a company wins or loses at the injunction phase, the matter ends, but sometimes & in very rare instances, a company will go even further to the third step of a lawsuit for damages, which is where they will seek to recoup the money lost by virtue of the employees breach. Pretty rare – not unheard of, so if you ever want help analyzing your particular situation, an employment lawyer is a good place to start. Granovsky&Sundareshis a great place to start because we do exactly that. Hope that’s helpful – talk to you soon!