{"id":34,"date":"2015-11-23T11:45:27","date_gmt":"2015-11-23T15:45:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/tradesecretslaw\/?p=34"},"modified":"2015-12-08T11:57:41","modified_gmt":"2015-12-08T15:57:41","slug":"pockers-intent-to-be-legally-bound-insufficient-consideration-for-pa-non-compete","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/tradesecretslaw\/2015\/11\/23\/pockers-intent-to-be-legally-bound-insufficient-consideration-for-pa-non-compete\/","title":{"rendered":"“Intent to be Legally Bound” Insufficient Consideration for Non-Compete in Pennsylvania"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Lawrence
Lawrence H. Pockers<\/a>

Read Lawrence's bio.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>On November 18, 2015, a 4-1 majority of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court (Justice Eakin, dissenting)\u00a0held in Socko v. Mid-Atlantic Systems of CPA, Inc.<\/em>, No. 142 MAP 2014, that a post-employment covenant not to compete entered into by an employee after the\u00a0start of his employment was void for lack of consideration,\u00a0despite the fact that the agreement containing the non-competition covenant included language that the parties “intend to be legally bound.”\u00a0 In so doing, the Court affirmed the Pennsylvania Superior\u00a0Court’s May 13,\u00a02014 order which, in turn, had affirmed the trial court’s grant of partial summary judgment to the plaintiff\/employee.\u00a0 Socko v. Mid-Atlantic Systems of CPA, Inc.<\/em>, 99 A.3d 928 (Pa. Super. 2014).\u00a0<\/p>\n

The issue on appeal was whether the Uniform Written Obligations Act, 33 P.S. section 6 (the “UWOA”), which provides that a written promise “shall not be invalid or unenforceable for lack of consideration, if the writing also contains an additional express statement, in any form of language, that the signer intends to be legally bound,” in effect trumped the longstanding requirement under Pennsylvania law that a post-employment restrictive covenant entered into after the start of employment must be supported by new and valuable consideration\u00a0beyond just\u00a0continuing employment.\u00a0 Applying the General Assembly’s\u00a0principles of statutory construction, specifically the\u00a0principle cautioning that a statute should not be interpreted in such a way to lead to an absurd or unreasonable result, and the “unique treatment in the law” of covenants not to compete, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court concluded that\u00a0“a construction of the UWOA which would vitiate the need for new and\u00a0valuable consideration\u00a0when entering into an\u00a0agreement containing\u00a0a restrictive covenant after the initiation of employment would be unreasonable.”<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision in Socko<\/em> makes clear that under Pennsylvania law the parties’ “intent to be legally bound” is no substitute for new and valuable consideration required to support a post-employment restrictive covenant entered\u00a0into after the\u00a0start of\u00a0employment.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On November 18, 2015, a 4-1 majority of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court (Justice Eakin, dissenting)\u00a0held in Socko v. Mid-Atlantic Systems of CPA, Inc., No. 142 MAP 2014, that a post-employment covenant not to compete entered into by an employee after the\u00a0start of his employment was void for lack of consideration,\u00a0despite the fact that the agreement … <\/p>\n

Continue reading ““Intent to be Legally Bound” Insufficient Consideration for Non-Compete in Pennsylvania”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":149,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[51,6,13,50,52],"ppma_author":[154],"class_list":["post-34","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-covenant-not-to-compete","tag-lawrence-h-pockers","tag-non-compete","tag-socko-v-mid-atlantic-systems-of-cpa-inc","tag-uniform-written-obligations-act"],"authors":[{"term_id":154,"user_id":149,"is_guest":0,"slug":"lhpockers","display_name":"Lawrence H. Pockers","avatar_url":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/tradesecretslaw\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/18\/2024\/08\/pockerslawrence-100x100.jpg","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/tradesecretslaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/tradesecretslaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/tradesecretslaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/tradesecretslaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/149"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/tradesecretslaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/tradesecretslaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/tradesecretslaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/tradesecretslaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/tradesecretslaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/tradesecretslaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=34"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}