{"id":638,"date":"2012-10-31T20:50:36","date_gmt":"2012-10-31T20:50:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bfvlaw.com\/judge-refuses-to-rubber-stamp-consent-injunction\/"},"modified":"2012-10-31T20:50:36","modified_gmt":"2012-10-31T20:50:36","slug":"judge-refuses-to-rubber-stamp-consent-injunction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bfvlaw.com\/judge-refuses-to-rubber-stamp-consent-injunction\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge Refuses to Rubber Stamp Consent Injunction in Restrictive Covenants Case"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Clark v. Johnson Truck Bodies, LLC <\/em>involves an unusual procedural disposition of a former employee\u2019s declaratory judgment action.\u00a0 <em><\/em>2012 WL 1014827\u00a0 (S.D. Ga. March 23, 2012).<\/p>\n<p>Richard Clark was hired by Johnson Truck Bodies, LLC (\u201cJTB\u201d) in September of 2008.\u00a0 Mr. Clark resided in Georgia and sold insulated truck bodies for JTB throughout Georgia and other parts of the South.\u00a0 Shortly after he was hired, Mr. Clark executed an Employee Invention, Secrecy Agreement and Covenant Not to Compete for Employees of Johnson Truck Bodies, Inc. (the \u201cEmployment Agreement\u201d).\u00a0 The Employment Agreement contained a non-competition provision which restricted Mr. Clark from being involved in any business which sells, resells, manufactures, creates or designs products which are similar to or in any way compete with the products sold by JTB, for a period of eighteen months following the date of the termination of his employment.\u00a0 This covenant did not contain a territorial restriction.<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Clark\u2019s employment was terminated on January 17, 2011.\u00a0 After he was terminated, JTB sought to enforce the non-competition covenant.\u00a0 In response, Mr. Clark filed a Complaint in the Superior Court of Chatham County, Georgia.\u00a0 JTB removed the action.\u00a0 The parties then reached a settlement agreement and JTB submitted a joint motion to approve a Consent Judgment.\u00a0 The parties\u2019 joint motion asked the Court to enter a permanent injunction containing the terms of a new agreement which would replace the above non-competition covenant.\u00a0 This injunction would prohibit Mr. Clark from contacting or forming a relationship with specified corporate entities.<\/p>\n<p>After this joint motion had been submitted, the Court provided the parties with notice of its intent to enter summary judgment in favor of Mr. Clark <em>sua sponte<\/em>, and the Court directed the parties to file briefs in support or opposition to such a judgment.\u00a0 In response, JTB argued that the Court lacked personal jurisdiction.\u00a0 Judge Moore, however, rejected this argument.<\/p>\n<p>Judge Moore then turned to whether Mr. Clark was entitled to summary judgment.\u00a0 The Court found that he was. \u00a0The Court reviewed the history of Georgia\u2019s restrictive covenants law and found that Georgia\u2019s old law and public policy governed the Employment Agreement since it was entered into in 2008, prior to the passage of Georgia\u2019s new Restrictive Covenants Act. \u00a0As the non-competition covenant lacked a territorial restriction, the covenant was unenforceable.\u00a0 Judge Moore further recognized that he could not blue-pencil the restrictive covenant under Georgia\u2019s old law and that the entire covenant therefore failed.<\/p>\n<p>Judge Moore therefore, entered summary judgment <em>sua sponte<\/em> in favor of Mr. Clark.\u00a0 Judge Moore also dismissed the parties\u2019 joint motion as moot: the parties\u2019 proposed permanent injunction was to run until January 17, 2012.\u00a0 However, that date had passed prior to the entry of Judge Moore\u2019s order on the joint motion.\u00a0 Therefore, he found that the requested relief was moot, and that there was no need to blue-pencil the proposed injunction to add an additional time restriction.<\/p>\n<p>The Court\u2019s approach in <em>Clark<\/em>, which may have diluted what JTB obtained from Mr. Clark in the parties\u2019 settlement, is unusual but serves as a reminder that most judges will not rubber stamp a consent injunction, particularly when it involves restrictive covenants.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Clark v. Johnson Truck Bodies, LLC involves an unusual procedural disposition of a former employee\u2019s declaratory judgment action.\u00a0 2012 WL 1014827\u00a0 (S.D. Ga. March 23, 2012). Richard Clark was hired by Johnson Truck Bodies, LLC (\u201cJTB\u201d) in September of 2008.\u00a0 Mr. Clark resided in Georgia and sold insulated truck bodies for JTB throughout Georgia and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_mo_disable_npp":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,9],"tags":[25,16],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Judge Refuses to Rubber Stamp Consent Injunction in Restrictive Covenants Case - Berman Fink Van Horn P.C.<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bfvlaw.com\/judge-refuses-to-rubber-stamp-consent-injunction\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Judge Refuses to Rubber Stamp Consent Injunction in Restrictive Covenants Case - Berman Fink Van Horn P.C.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Clark v. 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