Lower court threw out entire employment contract. Appeals court said that went too far
A Georgia appeals court saved a confidentiality agreement a lower court threw out in Motorsports of Conyers v. Burbach, teaching HR a vital contract lesson.
When Edmund Burbach walked out of his job as chief operating officer at a group of Harley-Davidson dealerships in December 2019, he took a new position at a competing dealership just 20 miles away. His former employers were not pleased.
Burbach had signed employment agreements in 2016 with two of the dealerships, Motorsports of Conyers and Motorsports of Durham, operating as Falcons Fury Harley-Davidson and Raging Bull Harley-Davidson. Those contracts included three types of restrictions: a three-year ban on poaching employees or customers, a three-year ban on working for competitors within 120 miles, and restrictions on using confidential company information like customer lists and financial data.
The employers sued in August 2020, seeking to stop Burbach from working at his new job and enforce all three restrictions. What followed was years of legal ping-pong between trial and appeals courts, ultimately landing at the Georgia Supreme Court, which sent the case back down with instructions to apply Georgia's Restrictive Covenants Act.
When the trial court finally issued its ruling in February 2025, it delivered bad news for the employers. The judge found the agreements violated Georgia law and declared them completely unenforceable....
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