Friday, May 21, 2010

New Faculty Publication: Kate O'Neill on Covenants Not to Compete

Kate O'Neill, Should I Stay or Should I Go?--Covenants Not to Compete in a Down Economy: A Proposal for Better Advocacy and Better Judicial Opinions, 6 Hastings Bus. L. J. 83-144 (2010).



Employers often require new employees to sign an agreement not to compete as a condition of their job offer. But what happens when the employee needs to leave a position and cannot find a new position that doesn't violate the covenant not to compete? The answer is unpredictable. Professor O'Neill proposes, in part 1, a four-factor rationale for determining "the contractual significance of an employee's assent" to one of these covenants. Part 2 examines and summarizes regulation of these covenants in the 50 states. Part 3 provides a detailed analysis of an employee's case in Washington state and applies the proposal to the facts of that case.

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