I never signed a non-compete, but I still being sued.
I am in technology sales. I was fired several months ago after an arguement with the owner of the company I worked for. I had never signed a non-compete, non-disclousure, or non-solitication agreement with my former employer. With some help from several former customers I was hired almost immediatly by a competitor. After working for my new employer for a little more than a week I received a cease and desist letter threatening me to stop contacting my former customers. I sent a polite reply stating that since I had never signed a non-compete they had no grounds to make such a claim. My current employer elected not to reply. Well two months have passed and today I received a notice that my former employer is seeking a temporary injunction against me and my current employer. Their main arguement seems to be that I must have stolen a customer list. This is untrue. Out of thousands of former customers I have only contacted 50 or so. And I had to look up the phone number for every one of those customers because all of my contact information was left with my old employer. My current employer has retained an attorney and has not given me any implication that this mess reflects poorly on me, but I am worried about it. A current employee of my former employer recently contacted me to tell me confidentially that the goal of my former employer is to make my life hell and to get me fired. How worried should I be about the injunction? Do I have any recourse to get my former employer to stop harrassing me?
1 answer | asked Aug 20, 2003 11:30 PM [EST] | applies to Arizona
Answers (1)
If you have been served with a summons and complaint, you need to respond immediately. Regardless of the merits of the former employer's claim, if you don't defend it you will lose.
There are several things your lawyer will want to consider. If the former employer based its lawsuit on nothing more than a suspicion that you took a customer list, you may have grounds to recover attorney fees as a sanction for violation of Rule 11 (a rule that requires a party and its attorney to have a good faith belief in the merits of a claim after a reasonable investigation of the facts). You may also want to consider a counterclaim for interference with your current employment relationship, although it seems you haven't been damaged yet in that relationship. Understand that even if you and your current employer are on good terms, your legal position and the employer's are separate, and they may diverge as the case goes along. The company's attorney cannot be your attorney without risking a potential conflict that could disqualify him or her from representing either you or the company.
In order to fully evaluate your case, the lawyer you retain will want to see the letters and papers you have received, as well as any agreements you may have signed while working for your former employer (employee handbooks often have removable signature pages,and you may have signed one the day you started the job).
You should also be aware of the Uniform Trade Secrets Act, which protects a company's proprietary information even without any signed non-disclosure agreement. Ask your lawyer about it.
posted by Francis Fanning | Aug 21, 2003 2:13 PM [EST]
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