Business Law
Q.I work for a fortune 500 company and am fed up of being denied vacation time that is owed to me, because I am "too busy" to be allowed to take my time. I lost many hours last year and I am headed down the same road again this year by the looks of things. I am a technician that is deployed as a contractor to another major corporation. I want to quit my job and go into business for myself, and do the same work for this company I am working at now for my present employer only for myself. The company I work for now found out I have talked to this company about taking over their work when I form my own company. My current employer says if I quit and take this customer's work from them (it's good for a couple hundred thousand a year) they will sue me. I never signed any non competetion agreements or anything when I was hired that said I can't quit and compete with them. I am sure they can sue me (just to try to cost me money and prevent me from becoming a threat) but I am wondering if they can stop me legally, or just waste my money defending myself against a lawsuit? I was told they couldn't stop me because they can't prevent me from making a living if this type work is how I make my living. Any information ???
A.You can legally do what you described. The employer can sue because anybody can. They can run your costs into the neighborhood of $40,000 before trial. You should win if you don't violate any trade secret laws or unfair competition law. That means: (a) don't take anything with you from you present employer. Don't take a copy of the customer list, any phone numbers, anything belonging to the employer. Not even if you had it before you came to work there, not even if you created it while you worked there. Don't take their customer list in your head and recreate it from memory; (b) don't do anything regarding your new employment until AFTER you have departed from the old one. Don't even tell customers that you will be leaving to start your own business; (c) don't encourage or even suggest that your new customer breach a contract with your former employer; (d) don't defame the employer; (e) don't do any of the 16 other forms of unfair competition that I can't think of at the moment; (f) to the extent possible, be prepared to prove that you followed the above advice.
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