Friendly texts and a "take them back" promise didn't save them when the court read the fine print

Two advisors left, took clients to a new firm, and breached their restraint. A court confirmed the bill.

On June 9, 2026, the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia dismissed an appeal by financial advisors Brett Puxty and Francis Coggan, upholding findings that they breached post-employment restraint clauses by soliciting their former employer's clients and moving them to their own company, Odyssey Advisory Services.

For HR professionals, the case is a tidy lesson in how restraint clauses get tested - and how courts put a dollar figure on the damage when they break.

The story is straightforward. Puxty and Coggan signed contracts with Monarch Advisory Group dated December 7, 2018. Clause 19 said that, without Monarch's prior consent, neither could solicit or accept instructions from any Monarch client for 12 months after leaving. They resigned effective January 31, 2020, and the restraint kicked in the next day. The court found that from early February 2020 the pair contacted clients using their Monarch email addresses, and that some of those clients soon became clients of Odyssey.

Their defence was consent. Puxty argued that Monarch's director, Tatiana Coulter, had agreed he could "take back" the clients he originally brought to the firm if a separate deal with law firm Madison Marcus collapsed. He pointed to a run of 2018 text messages, including one from Coulter that...

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