It’s a bad day when your client wants you to enforce a noncompete agreement against a $10/hour Russian immigrant with “a very limited command of English,” who sends most of her earnings back to her son and elderly parents in Russia, and who, after a year of at-will employment and with no further payment of consideration, was told that unless she signed the noncompete agreement she’d be fired the next day.
Nevertheless, that’s what the plaintiff’s lawyer faced in Zabota Community Center, Inc. v. Frolova.
Not surprisingly, Judge Allan van Gestel of the Suffolk County Business Litigation Session threw the book at the plaintiff in this case, denying the motion for every reason conceivable.
You can read the case here (pdf file).
I am a founding partner at the Boston law firm of Gesmer Updegrove LLP. This blog focuses on my practice areas: IP, business and antitrust law, as well as any other topic (legal or otherwise) that strikes my fancy. I've also tried to make the blog (and my scribd.com page, below), a resource on practice in the Massachusetts state and federal courts.