Whether the restrictive covenant contained in the contract between Adam Conrad ("Conrad") and Masters Laboratories ("Employer") is enforceable under Connecticut law.
Conrad is legally precluded from going to work for Johnson Research.
Conrad, Chief Cancer Researcher at Employer, during the past four years covenanted in his employment contract with Employer that for a period of two years after he left the employ of Employer he would not engage directly in cancer research in the states of Connecticut and six other states including Pennsylvania. After he left the employ of Employer and within said two year period, Conrad became a cancer researcher for Johnson research, a small competitor of Employer in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
Overview. Although a number of states bar or strictly limit the enforceability of covenants not to compete in employment contracts, Connecticut is among the majority of states which handle such clauses on a case by case basis. Hartig says that "though restrictive covenants ancillary to contracts of employment were once considered void as repugnant to public policy, American courts have been enforcing noncompetition clauses for well over a century." The basic reason why courts in most states have tended to enforce such clauses is that "the shift of American business from a manufacturing economy to one based on services and intellectual property has highlighted the need to protect intangible assets of service sector and high technology employees."
Early Cases. Connecticut cases have followed the aforesaid national trend. Most of the early cases in which restrictive covenants were upheld involved employment contracts with salesmen, such as Roessler v. Burwell, 119 Conn. 289, 176 A.126 (1934), in which a restrictive covenant applicable to a specific and limited geographic area was upheld. Connecticut courts indicated, however, that even in cases involving salesmen, the time and geographic constraints...