Houston, TX employment law attorney Gregg M. Rosenberg discusses the trends he sees in the area of noncompetition agreements. He observes that the current trend in non-competition agreements is that judges are generally reluctant to prevent someone from working in their industry, with one major exception. That exception arises when an employee engages in misconduct while preparing to leave a company—for instance, forwarding company emails to a personal account or copying files onto flash drives. He emphasizes that such actions are serious missteps and can put the employee in significant legal trouble; he makes it clear to clients that these are behaviors to avoid. Judges also frown upon the deletion of company data, or situations where, for example, employees’ devices become unusable because of improper data handling.

He notes that, outside of such misconduct, it is very rare for a non-compete to completely bar someone from an industry. Enforcement is also far less likely when the employee has been terminated. He points out that, especially in recent years with many COVID-related layoffs, courts have been very hesitant to enforce non-competes against individuals who lose their jobs through no fault of their own. In these situations, he has been highly successful in helping clients avoid being bound by overly restrictive agreements.