{"id":193,"date":"2010-08-17T01:47:00","date_gmt":"2010-08-17T01:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/davidlevylaw.com\/wp\/\/2010\/08\/17\/employer-can-be-liable-for-honoring-non-compete-agreement-between-employee-and-former-employer\/"},"modified":"2021-02-09T22:55:37","modified_gmt":"2021-02-09T22:55:37","slug":"employer-can-be-liable-for-honoring-non-compete-agreement-between-employee-and-former-employer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidlevylaw.com\/wp\/?p=193","title":{"rendered":"Employer Can Be Liable for Honoring Non-Compete Agreement between Employee and Former Employer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last month, in <em>Silguero v. Creteguard<\/em>, a California Court of Appeal held that an employer could be liable for wrongful termination in violation of public policy for terminating an employee to honor a non-compete agreement between the employee and a former employer.<\/p>\n<p>In <em>Silguero<\/em>, plaintiff\u2019s former employer requested \u201cthe cooperation and participation\u201d of plaintiff\u2019s current employer in enforcing a non-compete agreement signed by plaintiff. Although it understood that non-compete agreements were unenforceable in California, the subsequent employer fired plaintiff \u201cout of respect and understanding with colleagues in the same industry.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The <em>Silguero<\/em> Court explained that the \u201cunderstanding\u201d between the employee\u2019s former and subsequent employers was void and unenforceable under <em>Business and Professions Code <\/em>\u00a716600 because it unfairly limited the mobility of the employee, and because the former employer should not be allowed to indirectly accomplish that which it could not accomplish directly.<\/p>\n<p>In finding that plaintiff could state a cause of action against her subsequent employer for wrongful discharge in violation of public policy, the <em>Silguero<\/em> Court found that <em>Business and Professions Code <\/em>\u00a716600 was a fundamental public policy favoring open competition and employee mobility. Further, the <em>Silguero <\/em>Court found the \u201cunderstanding\u201d between the former and subsequent employers to be tantamount to a no-hire agreement.<\/p>\n<p>While it has long been settled under California law that a former employer can be liable to an employee for attempting to force a subsequent employer to abide by a non-compete agreement, <em>Silguero<\/em> confirms that the subsequent employer may also be liable to the employee if it succumbs to the former employer\u2019s demands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last month, in Silguero v. Creteguard, a California Court of Appeal held that an employer could be liable for wrongful termination in violation of public policy for terminating an employee to honor a non-compete agreement between the employee and a&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidlevylaw.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidlevylaw.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidlevylaw.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidlevylaw.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidlevylaw.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=193"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/davidlevylaw.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":290,"href":"https:\/\/davidlevylaw.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193\/revisions\/290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidlevylaw.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidlevylaw.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidlevylaw.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}