Restraint of trade advice

A regular source of dispute between employers and former employees or contractors are the restraints placed on former employees or contractors once they leave the employer – restraints on competing with the employer’s business, restraints on servicing the employer’s clients, restraints on accessing the employer’s suppliers or business contacts and even restraints on encouraging the employer’s other staff to leave.

There’s a lot of myth about restraints.  Former employees often believe they are not worth the paper they’re printed on, they can be easily set aside or they can’t stop customers from making their own decisions, while employers continue to demand that the former employee never again provide their services through competitors or directly themselves.

Like all myths, these views are not reality.

Restraints of trade are enforceable provided they are reasonable.  What constitutes ‘reasonable’ depends on the facts of each case so it helps to have read a lot of the case law in this area to develop an understanding of what it takes to enforce or defeat a restraint.  That’s what we’ve done.