non-competition

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The legal and mainstream media is still abuzz following the Federal Trade Commission’s Jan. 5, 2023, Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that would ban all employee non-compete agreements nationwide. And earlier this month, a bipartisan Senate bill was introduced (the Workforce Mobility Act of 2023, sponsored by U.S. Senators Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Todd Young (R-Ind.)) that also would ban non-competes across the board (except, as in the FTC’s proposal, in connection with the sale of a business). But comments made by President Biden in his Feb. 7 State of the Union Address signal that a more measured approach focused on banning non-competes for low-wage workers may ultimately be what becomes law.…

Continue Reading Biden State of the Union signals measured approach on non-compete ban

In Nitro-Lift Technologies, L.L.C. v. Howard, the U.S. Supreme Court this week held that if a contract contains an arbitration provision and there is a challenge to the validity of the contract, it is for the arbitrator and not a court to hear that challenge. The case is important for employers because the challenge was to the validity of a non-competition agreement.
Continue Reading United States Supreme Court: A Challenge To The Enforceability Of A Non-Competition Agreement Must Be Presented To The Arbitrator, And Not A Court, If The Contract Contains An Arbitration Provision

This past May, we reported that the Ohio Supreme Court ruled in Acordia of Ohio, L.L.C. v. Fishel that following a merger, the surviving company may not be able to enforce employees’ non-compete agreements, where the agreements failed to contain an assignment clause, and the time period of the employees’ non-competes began to run as of the date of the merger. The Court reconsidered its decision, and issued a new decision today.
Continue Reading Ohio Supreme Court Partially Reverses its Acordia Non-Compete Decision

More and more these days it seems like the obligations of being a lawyer, husband, father, son, sports fan, etc, get in the way of blogging. As a result, I end up accumulating a number of worthwhile topics for blog posts that end up in the discard pile. Twitter helps keep the backlog to a minimum, but I really don’t know how many of you actually follow me @briandhallesq (hint, hint). So, while I am by no means committing to make this a regular feature of Employer Law Report, I will now clear – in no particular order — my backlog for the month:

According to a Wall Street Journal article, a recent lawsuit seeks a declaration from the New York Department of Labor that putting a GPS tracker on an employee’s family car to uncover time sheet violations was a violation of the state constitution’s guarantee against unreasonable searches and seizures. According to the lawsuit, the monitoring continued during evenings, weekends and a family vacation. This won’t turn out well for the employer.

An Ohio appellate court has upheld a physician’s non-compete agreement that prohibited him from engaging in a hematology or oncology practice in his former employer’s "primary service area." This decision continues the Ohio trend of upholding physician non-competes and Ohio courts have repeatedly rejected the argument that covenants are not enforceable against physicians solely because they impair patients’ choice.…

Continue Reading Clearing the Backlog – September

The Ohio Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal that addresses the extent to which a corporate merger may impact the surviving company’s ability to enforce restrictive covenants that its predecessor companies entered into with their employees.
Continue Reading Ohio Supreme Court to Address Assignability of Noncompetes During Mergers and Acquisitions