Keesal, Young & Logan’s attorneys regularly represent and consult with corporate and individual clients regarding the scope and impact of the laws relating to unfair business practices, including the effect of such laws on non-competition and non-solicitation agreements.
Our attorneys have defended financial services clients (including mutual funds companies, securities firms, banks and other lenders), magazine publishers, corporate consulting firms, insurance companies and other business entities that have been accused of unfair business practices. We have sought enforcement of non-competition and non-solicitation agreements in connection with employment matters, mergers and asset acquisitions. In addition, we have pursued and defended trade secret, contractual interference and trade libel litigation involving corporate competitors and their employees.
Finally, our attorneys have significant experience litigating matters relating to California’s Unfair Competition Law (Business and Professions Code section 17200, et seq.). For example, nine years before the California Court of Appeal held in 2005 that California’s Unfair Competition Law did not apply to securities transactions, Keesal, Young & Logan had already established this principle in the United States District Court and in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals
Among the recent results obtained by our attorneys in this area are the following:
- Obtained a temporary restraining order, preliminary injunction and contempt sanctions in United States District Court for a financial services firm against a departed senior manager who joined a direct competitor of the firm.
- Obtained a dismissal of trade secret and trade libel claims against employees of a financial services firm brought by its competitor, and an award of six figures in attorney’s fees against the competitor for asserting a bad faith trade secret claim.
- Obtained a temporary restraining order for a securities firm prohibiting nine former employees from soliciting clients and utilizing trade secrets.
- Obtained a preliminary injunction prohibiting the use of confidential information for a large commercial insurance brokerage firm against a team of former brokers who left to join a competitor.
- Obtained a dismissal of a Business and Professions Code section 17200 claim for a multinational client based upon recent changes in non-competition laws (Proposition 64).