Continued at-will employment can be sufficient consideration for an employee’s restrictive covenant agreement, the Connecticut Appellate Court has held. Schimenti Construction Company, LLC v. Schimenti, No. AC44274 (Jan. 17, 2023).
Until now, Connecticut law was unclear whether continued at-will employment constituted sufficient consideration for restrictive covenants, such as non-competes, non-solicits, or non-disclosure agreements, with various trial court decisions in Connecticut coming down on opposite sides of the question.
It is a basic principle of contract law that, to be enforceable, an agreement must entail an exchange of consideration between the parties.
This case involved an employee who entered into a 2014 nondisclosure agreement, which included a two-year non-competition provision, as a condition of his continued at-will employment. In 2018, the employee resigned from employment. The company then brought a lawsuit claiming that the employee breached the contractual obligations he owed to the company under the nondisclosure agreement.
Discovery was conducted and the employee filed a motion for summary judgment. In granting the employee’s motion for summary judgment, the trial court held that the employee’s mere continued at-will employment was insufficient consideration to create an enforceable agreement.
The employer appealed the decision to the Connecticut Appellate Court, which reversed the trial court’s holding.
BJP national spokesperson and MP Sudhanshu Trivedi said Gandhi’s political understanding was “virtually non-existent” and alleged that he lacked even a “fundamental understanding of Indian politics”.