An accountant who resigned from his employment and who allegedly violated a non-solicitation restriction by providing services to former clients of the prior employer will not be subject to his former employer’s anticompetitive demands. B&B attorneys Todd Bennett and Sudeshna Trivedi successfully defeated the former employer’s motion for a preliminary injunction, including the accounting firm’s request for a court order requiring B&B’s client to disclose all clients of the former employer whom he has serviced leaving his employment.
The former employer filed suit against the B&B client in May 2023, alleging that he had solicited and serviced current and former clients in breach of his agreement with the company. However, the Middlesex County Superior Court found that the former employer failed to prove that the B&B client had breached the agreement, which is a requirement to obtain the extraordinary remedy of preliminary injunction.
Judge Barry-Smith also opined that even if the employee had solicited or serviced the accounting firm’s clients, the agreement already allowed for an award of damages in the event that the company succeeded in its claims. As such, a preliminary injunction was unnecessary.
This decision makes clear that an employer cannot resort to seeking injunctive relief if there is no reasonable likelihood of success in proving a breach of the agreement, and that an injunction will not issue where there is already an adequate remedy at law.
A copy of the Court’s decision can be found here.
