Fedder & Janofsky Obtains Dismissal of Non-Compete Claim
Baltimore, Maryland (September 9, 2015): The Circuit Court for Baltimore City today granted a motion for summary judgment, dismissing all the claims of Vespoli USA, Inc. against its former employee and his subsequent employer in Baltimore. Vespoli, a Connecticut racing boat manufacturer, sued seeking to enforce a worldwide covenant not to compete. The ex-employee was a boat salesman who resigned to work for a Baltimore company that repairs various brands of racing boats, including Vespoli boats. Both the ex-employee and his Baltimore employer were represented by Fedder & Janofsky LLC.
The Court (Jeffrey Geller, Judge) ruled orally that, on its face, Vespoli’s worldwide covenant not to compete was too broad and unreasonable in its restrictions, so that it was unenforceable as a matter of law. Therefore, the ex-employee was free to compete, and his subsequent employer could not be liable for any claimed interference with a contract.
The Court noted that the restrictions were part of a pattern by Vespoli amounting to a “bullying” of its employees. Vespoli attempted to impose non-competition restrictions on all its employees, including office workers and menial laborers who had no exposure to customers or trade secrets. In drafting the scope of its non-competition agreements, which the Court described as “sweeping,” Vespoli made all of the restrictions as broad as conceivably possible, with the improper expectation that the courts would ultimately reform the scope of the restrictions to enforce them. This tactic impermissibly rendered all the Vespoli employees unable to work anywhere else in the industry in any capacity, and unable to solicit business even from non-customers. The Court denied Vespoli’s request to re-write or “blue-pencil” the non-competition restrictions to enforce them, because to do so, the Court would have had to engage in a “massive re-write” after the fact, which is inappropriate under the law. The Court also noted that Vespoli’s bullying pattern included having its Connecticut lawyer offensively threaten departing employees, including an employee for whom the company could not produce any non-competition agreement at all.
