Many major hospital chains in Texas require their physicians to sign non-compete agreements. Despite all the talk about how the federal government is going to

Many major hospital chains in Texas require their physicians to sign non-compete agreements. Despite all the talk about how the federal government is going to
If you’re an employee in Texas and you’re bound by a non-compete agreement, you may wonder if you can argue that the agreement is “unfair” and win. The answer is yes, at least in some cases. In a recent case, a Texas Court of Appeals found that it would be unfair to enforce a 1-year non-compete agreement against an employee who only worked for his employer less than 5 months and was let go without cause.
Many non-compete agreements in Texas often include employee non-solicitation restraints, which prohibit departing employees from soliciting their co-workers to leave with them. Whereas non-competition restraints
States around the country vary in how they approach the enforcement of unreasonable non-compete agreements. While the majority of states allow their courts to “blue pencil” or rewrite restrictive covenants to make them reasonable, three states do not permit such reformation, and four states have no clear legal guidance on whether blue-pencilling is permitted, leaving employers in limbo.
In non-compete disputes in Texas, employers often argue that everything that they provided to employees was confidential, while employees argue that nothing that was provided to them was confidential. As the result, the issue of confidentiality often ends up being an ultimate “fact issue” that must be resolved by a judge or a jury.
In Texas, client non-solicitation agreements are subject to the same rules as the non-compete agreements. Therefore, they must be “reasonable” and “not impose a greater restraint than is necessary to protect the goodwill or other business interest” of the employer.