Tuesday, October 18
1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. Eastern
12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. Central
11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. Mountain
10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. Pacific
In the sixth installment in the 2022 Trade Secrets Webinar Series, Seyfarth attorneys will discuss tips and best practices for multijurisdictional businesses when it comes to restrictive covenants, including non-compete and
Continue Reading Upcoming Webinar! How Multijurisdictional Businesses Should Approach Non-Competes
Nearly five years ago, the Massachusetts Noncompetition Agreement Act (“MNAA”, also sometimes abbreviated as the “MNCA”) went into effect. That statute ushered in new requirements for non-competes in the Bay State (including not only residents of Massachusetts, but also those who are merely employed in Massachusetts). Among the MNAA’s requirements is a forum selection provision that purports to require civil suits related to non-competes to be brought exclusively in the county in which the employee resides, or if both parties agree, in Suffolk county in Massachusetts.
Despite being in effect for nearly a half-decade, there have been relatively few published cases interpreting the MNAA (see here and here for a synopsis of a couple of those cases). Recently, however, a federal judge in Virginia weighed in on the statute’s forum requirement, determining that a suit against a Massachusetts employee could proceed in federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia, rather than be dismissed and re-filed in Massachusetts.
Continue Reading Massachusetts’ “Provincial” Forum Selection Requirement May Not Trump Reasonable Foreign Forum Selection Clause
As in real estate, as in law. A recent ruling in the USDC for the District of Colorado demonstrates that procedural considerations of where to file may often have substantive consequences. Plaintiff LS3, Inc. (“LS3”) sued Cherokee Federal Solutions, LLC (“CFS”) and various former employees of LS3 in the United States District Court for the District of Colorado. The gist of the action was that CFS, a competitor of LS3, solicited away former employees of LS3 to work for CFS in violation of employee non-compete agreements. Claims were asserted against the individual employees for breach of the restrictive covenant agreements and against CFS for tortious interference with those same agreements. Critically, the agreements at issue all contained Maryland choice-of-law provisions but apparently no venue or forum provisions.
Continue Reading Location, Location, Location