Articles Posted in Commercial Litigation

The Pennsylvania Superior Court recently examined what impact, if any, the Pennsylvania Uniform Written Obligations ACT (PUWOA) has on an employment agreement that contained a covenant not to compete entered into after the employee started working with the employer. The short answer is – no effect at all.

First a little background is in order. In order for a covenant not to compete to be enforceable against an employee, the employee must receive something valuable (consideration) from his or her employer. If this covenant is bargained for by the employer prior to the employee starting work, then the prospect of future employment with the employer satisfies the “valuable right” or “valuable consideration” needed for a court to enforce a covenant not to compete. However, if the employee is already employed by the employer, continued employment is not sufficient additional consideration; something more must be given by the employer.

The case before the appellate court involved the situation where an employer wanted to enforce a covenant not to compete that was entered into after the employee was already employed by the employer. The employer tried to avoid the requirement of providing additional consideration by relying upon the PUWOA. This act states that an agreement will not be enforceable for lack of consideration if the words “intending to be legally bound” are in the agreement. Unfortunately for the employer, the appellate court held that the language “intending to be legally bound” did not constitute sufficient additional consideration in the context of a covenant not to compete.

So what is the important take away here? Review your employment agreements and if you have a restrictive covenant, revisit what consideration was given to your employee and when it was given. Ask yourself if the employee is mission critical and whether you really want to enforce the covenant? It does just have to be money that will support a court finding sufficient additional consideration.
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For the second time in the last year a judge has precluded expert testimony regarding bath faith claims asserted against insurance companies. The most recent case out of the Western District of Pennsylvania involved a motor vehicle accident where the insurance company offered $13,000 on a policy with a $300,000 limit. In response to the paltry offer where plaintiff had sustained substantial injuries, plaintiff sued Geico alleging it had breached its contract with plaintiff and was handling the claim in bad faith.

To support his claim, the plaintiff attempted to introduce an insurance claims expert to provide the jury with information about the concept of bad faith. There have been cases in the past where insurance experts testified with explanations about standards and practices within the insurance industry. In this case however, the judge determined that the concept of bad faith and how it relates to the insurance industry was not too difficult or complex for the average juror to understand. Accordingly, the judge prevented the plaintiff from presenting his expert to the jury.

This is the most recent in a series of decisions in Pennsylvania since 1997 to establish that while bad faith is a legal concept, the general population doesn’t require scientific or technical knowledge to understand it. In other words, the judge decided that the members of the jury were smart enough to understand the concept and any additional information presented to the jury in court would simply impede on the jury’s fact finding function.
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On May 29, 2013, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court decided an interesting case regarding how an initial offer letter to a prospective employee can potentially impact a restrictive covenant in an employee’s employment agreement. Before discussing this case, we need a very brief summary regarding what courts look to when deciding whether to enforce a restrictive covenant.

In Pennsylvania, the law is clear that a restrictive covenant (non-compete or non-solicitation of clients or employees for example) is valid and enforceable against an employee under certain conditions so long as the covenant does not impose an illegal restraint of trade. There are many different components that make a restrictive covenant enforceable. However, this post will only focus on the timing requirement.

To be enforceable, a restrictive covenant has to be part of the initial employment terms at the time the offer of employment is made to the employee. The key is that there must be no employee/employer relationship at the time the covenant is being imposed. The restrictive covenant must be part of the overall prospective terms of employment. A restrictive covenant will always fail where the employer seeks to impose the covenant on an unsuspecting employee (already employed by employer) and offers no additional consideration (value) in exchange for the additional restriction.

With this as background, we can now better understand what the Pennsylvania Supreme Court was grappling with. In this case, an employee resigned from his position at one company and went to work for a competitor. The former employer sought a preliminary injunction to stop its former employee from working for a competitor. What prompted this case to travel through the appellate courts was the wording of the offer letter. The courts were struggling with the issue of whether the offer letter that the employee signed was the actual employment contract and not the later agreement titled “Employment Agreement” that the employee signed on his first day of work. The “Employment Agreement” and not the offer letter contained the restrictive covenant.

If the offer letter was the actual employment agreement because it contained all the essential terms of employment, the restrictive covenant would not have been enforceable. The reason for this conclusion under the fact scenario above would have been that the employee had already accepted his position with the company when he signed the offer letter and thus received no additional consideration when he signed his “employment agreement” with the company on his first day of work.

Luckily for the former employer the Pennsylvania Supreme Court reached the conclusion that the offer letter was just part of the overall process and not the employment agreement. The offer letter clearly stated that employment was conditioned upon the signing of an employment agreement. However, be warned, you cannot simply include language in your offer letter to indicate that employment is conditioned upon the signing of an employment agreement as concurring opinions by certain of the Justices stated their problems with just such a broad holding.
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