Real Life Employment Law
Nearly every day, executives and managers, and the in-house counsel and Human Resources professionals who work with them, are confronted with unanticipated questions regarding the workforce. Just when they think they have "seen it all," along comes a new and often stranger scenario involving an odd twist to an area they thought they fully understood. These individuals often find themselves back at square one when trying to construct an appropriate response and devise a creative solution to the problem presented. Sometimes these "Quirky Questions" can be resolved easily; other times, they implicate practical and legal issues that are not immediately apparent.
This Quirky Employment Questions Blog addresses unanticipated questions regarding the workforce.
We encourage you to submit your thoughts and reactions to the questions presented. We also encourage you to submit questions that you would like to see addressed, subject to these guidelines.
Stephen D. Bell
Michael Droke
Joseph W. Hammell
Sarah Andrews Herman
Ryan E. Mick
William J. Miller
Melissa Raphan
Gregory M. Saylin
Gabrielle Wirth
David C. SingerBLOG CONTACT INFO
E: Wirth.Gabrielle@dorsey.com
P: 714.800.1455
Quirky Question # 126: We have a non-compete issue. Several years ago, we provided our employees with an employment agreement that contained various post-employment restrictive covenants. When one of our employees left a couple of years later and started competing with us, we took a careful look at the non-compete language in the employment agreement. Simply put, it was not...
Best Practices to Ensure that a Non-Competition Agreement is Enforceable in China By Richard Chao and Haidong Yang Introduction After more than a year since the implementation of the PRC Employment Contract Law (the “Law”) (the PRC Employment Contract Law was promulgated on August 5, 2007 and became effective on January 1, 2008; the Implementing Regulations for the PRC Employment...
Quirky Question # 104: We are a high tech company. We use various post-employment restrictive covenants with many, though not all, of our employees. For our engineers, our senior managers and other select employees, however, we require non-competition, non-solicitation and non-disclosure agreements. Because of the recent success of one of our software products, we are receiving serious inquiries from two...
Quirky Question # 96: Our company is considering requiring our existing and future employees to sign non-competition agreements. To make the agreements more palatable to our employees, we are considering linking the obligations imposed on the employees to an obligation on the company to compensate the employees if they cannot find suitable alternative non-competitive employment. We are planning to cap...
Quirky Question # 78: I am the HR Director at our company. I just learned that one of our most valuable employees has resigned and taken a position with a competitor. I requested our IT Department to make an evaluation of his computer. They reported to me that before he left, he emailed to himself and his new employer customer...
Quirky Question # 55: We have a highly mobile workforce, and we are concerned about our former employees going to work for a competitor, stealing our customers, and raiding our employees. We are a technology based company and have developed proprietary information that would give our competitors an edge if our former employees were to use or disclose it to...
Quirky Question # 52: I formerly was employed as an engineer of a high tech start-up company. I worked for the company for several years in a non-management role. The company struggled to complete its product (or even to get it to work properly). Because of these ongoing problems, the company had continual difficulties raising money. Nearly bankrupt, the company...
Quirky Question # 11: Our firm uses non-competition agreements for a number of our key employees. The non-competition agreement was drafted by our outside counsel who tells us that it is enforceable. One of our managers who had signed such an agreement recently resigned. We just learned that she will be starting employment at our primary competitor, in a role...
Erica ChenErica is an associate in the Costa Mesa office of Dorsey & Whitney and a member of the firm’s Labor and Employ...
Jack SullivanJack is a Partner in Dorsey’s Labor & Employment group, where he focuses his practice on employment adv...
Ieva AubinAs an employment and business immigration attorney, ...
Michael DrokeMike started his career as a client, not a lawyer...
Matt DurhamMatt defends employers in Utah and throughout the ...
Aaron GoldsteinAaron is a Partner in Dorsey’s Labor & Employ...
Josh HughesJosh’s experience spans trial and appellate advoc...
Jillian KornblattJillian is a Partner in Dorsey’s Labor & Employ...
Laura LestradeLaura began practicing at Dorsey in 1992 and has s...
Ryan MickFor more than a decade, Ryan has counseled corpo...
Nick PappasNick litigates and counsels with respect to com...
Melissa RaphanMelissa is a Partner in Dorsey’s Labor and Employ...
Gabrielle WirthEmployers turn to Gabrielle for guidance on how they...
