Solicitation of Current Customers or Clients Sample Clauses

Solicitation of Current Customers or Clients. ‌ When drafting non-solicitation agreements, employers must determine whether there are jurisdictional limits in enforcing agreements with respect to the non-solicitation of current (or actual) customers or clients. An employer’s customers and clients are generally protected by a non-solicitation agreement, as long as the former employee had contact with the customer prior to termination, and the customer was not engaged by the former employer through the employee’s independent recruitment efforts, neither subsidized nor otherwise financially supported by the former employer.51 The non-solicitation of existing customers with whom the employee had contact during employment is generally an enforceable restriction.52 Some jurisdictions like Oklahoma, however, statutorily limit non-solicitation agreements to “direct” solicitation of a former employee’s current 48 See, e.g., Press Release, U.S. Dept. of Justice, Justice Department Requires Xxxxx and Wabtec to Terminate Unlawful Agreements Not to Compete for Employees (Apr. 3, 2018) (on file with author); Xxxxxxxx Xxxxx and Xxxxx Xxxxxxx, Department of Justice Fires Warning Shot Over Unlawful No-Poach Agreements, JD Supra, LLC, xxxxx://xxx.xxxxxxx.xxx/legalnews/department-of-justice-fires-warning-80444/ (last visited May 21, 2018). 49 See Xxxxxxx v. CentiMark Corp, 796 F.3d 656, 665 (7th Cir. 2015). 50 See, e.g., Xxxxxxx v. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co., 759 So.2d 362, 366 (Miss. 2000); Xxxxxx & Cay of Georgia, Inc. x. Xxxxxxx Co., 629 S.E.2d 800 (Ga. 2006). 51 See Hall v. Edgewood Partners Ins. Center, 878 F.3d 524, 529 (6th Cir. 2017); Xxxxxxx, 805 F.3d at 587. 52 Xxxxxxx, 805 F.3d at 587; see also Xxxxx, 410 P.3d at 1017. “established” customers.53 The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit and Georgia’s Supreme Court also concur that an agreement is enforceable when limited to the employer’s current customers that the former employee had contact with prior to termination of employment.54 Conversely, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit found that a former employee would breach a non-solicitation agreement if the former employee had previous contact with customers, but not if the former employee obtained the customers through “independent recruitment efforts.”55 In Hall v. Edgewood Partners Insurance Center, an employee identified certain clients with whom he had established relationships before working for his former employer and without any contribution from his former empl...