Your Honor, Industrial asks this Court to remove Mr. Morgan from his livelihood for one year throughout Columbia. Its contract prohibits him from owning, operating, or working at any competing sandblasting or similar industrial-cleaning business anywhere in the state. Under Strom v. Knox Broadcasting Corporation and Fawcett Railway Relief v. Columbia Rail Services, a restriction must be strictly limited to an employer’s demonstrated protective need in time, territory, and activity. This covenant meets none of those requirements. We ask the Court to hold it invalid and deny the requested injunction.
A legitimate interest must be distinguished from an interest in avoiding ordinary competition
Industrial trained Morgan when he entered the field and benefited from his substantial skill. Mr. Cole fairly points out that Industrial paid his wages while he undertook some certification coursework, supplied equipment and support, and gave him opportunities to learn estimating. We do not ask the Court to disregard that investment. But an investment in an employee’s general development is not a blank check to prohibit every later competing job. The cases require a restriction actually tailored to a legitimate interest.
In Strom, the employer spent more than a million dollars developing a particular public persona that viewers identified with its station. A six-month on-air restriction let that station transition its identity, while the employee continued paid off-air work. The harm protected, the transition period, the specific activity, and the employee’s continuing livelihood fit together.
Morgan is not transferring a public persona that Industrial created and must replace in viewers’ minds. He learned an occupation and became exceptionally effective in it. The record identifies no confidential customer list he took, protected document he copied, or trade secret he disclosed. Cole says a competitor now wins bids it would not have won without Morgan. That shows competitive value, but does not by itself establish that the statewide, all-work, one-year restraint is necessary or reasonable.
Morgan paid the actual QP certification costs himself, according to his cross-examination testimony. Industrial paid his time and supplied the practical working environment; those are distinct contributions, not a reason to ignore either account. Other Industrial foremen have since obtained certifications, and Columbia Coatings also has certified foremen. This is not proof that Industrial loses the unique ability to compete unless Morgan is excluded from the entire industry. The requested injunction substantially exceeds any demonstrated need to protect the company’s training or continuity.
The statewide territory exceeds Morgan’s work and customer contact
Fawcett treats as prima facie valid a territory where the employee worked and the employer does business. It rejects territory reaching areas where the employee did not work or have customer contact without a strong justification beyond a desire not to compete. An employer’s broad business reach does not automatically define the permissible restriction on this employee.
Morgan worked almost entirely in Columbia City in the state’s northwest corner. He identified one Sidalia job in the northeast and one Crescent job about twenty miles outside Columbia City. That is not statewide customer contact. His current field assignments are in the south and southeast, where this record supplies no former Industrial assignments or cultivated customer relationship. The clause nevertheless excludes him from competing work everywhere in Columbia.
Industrial may emphasize that estimating and office work can affect bids statewide. But the former work and customer exposure must be shown, not inferred simply because bidding skills are portable. There is no specific evidence that Morgan formerly handled Industrial’s customers or confidential bids in every statewide market. His new office work’s statewide reach does not retroactively make the old restriction appropriately geographic.
Fawcett involved a still larger multistate territory, but its reasoning is not a rule that a single-state covenant always is valid. The defect is the mismatch between the restriction and the employee’s actual former territory. That mismatch is present here.
The prohibited activities exclude more work than necessary
The clause bars Morgan from owning, operating, or working at any directly competing sandblasting or similar industrial-cleaning business. Its language identifies a category of businesses rather than carefully limiting the tasks Morgan may perform for them. Industrial’s requested relief confirms the breadth: it wants to stop him from doing any work at Columbia Coatings.
Fawcett explains that an employer may restrict services identical to those the employee performed, but cannot prohibit work for a competitor in any capacity without a demonstrated protective basis. Under this clause Morgan could not take a role unrelated to customers, bids, or the specific trained functions on which Industrial relies. The phrase “similar industrial cleaning” also sweeps beyond a defined service or account.
Industrial can argue that the clause should be read as covering only competing services and that Morgan actually performs the sandblasting and bidding he performed before. Even on that narrower reading, the record still does not connect every prohibited service throughout Columbia with a necessary protective interest. More fundamentally, the injunction Industrial seeks would not preserve unrelated work or otherwise give Morgan the sort of paid alternative central to Strom. This is a restraint on livelihood, rather than a focused transition limit on a particular protectable activity.
One year is not self-validating
Fawcett expressly rejects a fixed presumptively valid duration. Employers must prove specific facts showing how the period is needed for a transition; restrictions of a year or less can fail without that showing. Industrial therefore cannot justify its clause merely by noting that one year is shorter than the three years rejected in Fawcett or below the longest period discussed in prior cases.
The actual replacement evidence undermines necessity. Industrial hired another foreman the week before Morgan left. It already employed the office colleague who asked Morgan to help with bids and who, according to Morgan, knew substantially what he knew. Other foremen hold relevant certifications. Industrial can disagree about whether those substitutes fully replace his talent, but Cole supplied no particular training schedule, transition plan, client-transfer period, or reason an entire year is required.
Strom’s six months corresponded to an established identity-transition plan. Here Cole asks for enough time to train someone but does not quantify or explain that need against the replacements already present. The contract automatically applies for one year after any termination, regardless of the actual circumstances. That is the absence of a tailored evidentiary basis that Fawcett found fatal.
The balance strongly favors allowing Morgan to work
Strom requires weighing the employer’s protected interest against the employee’s harm. Industrial describes lost bids and Morgan’s valuable expertise. Those are real business concerns, but they do not establish a right to suppress ordinary competition over an entire state after already hiring a foreman and retaining bidding staff.
Morgan testified that enforcement leaves him without work after years of developing this occupation. He moved for a $20,000 increase, an office position, and flexibility in field work after Industrial increased his workload without another raise. Those employment choices do not immunize a genuine covenant breach, but they explain why a blanket employment ban causes substantial hardship. Unlike Strom, he has no demonstrated fully compensated alternative role that the restriction permits.
Columbia Coatings competed aggressively before hiring him and took jobs from Industrial then, too. Morgan testified it had not taken one of his customers during that earlier period. Cole identifies lost bids after the move, but provides no customer-specific evidence converting Morgan’s general ability to estimate work into an exclusive Industrial asset. The balance does not support disabling a skilled worker merely because his former employer would prefer not to face his competition.
The Court should not reconstruct the bargain
Cole alternatively asks for a Columbia City restriction lasting long enough to train a replacement. Fawcett rejected a request to rewrite an unreasonable covenant into an appropriate territory, set of services, and duration where the original restrictions bore no relationship to the employer’s protective need. That decision does not establish that every judicial modification is always forbidden. It does establish that an employer is not entitled to have the court supply the missing tailored agreement and proof.
The proposed alternative still leaves the length undefined and does not cure the all-capacities problem. Nor does it explain why the replacements already identified require a new training interval or why a client-specific restriction would be insufficient. Enforcing “less” than a contract says is not necessarily reasonable simply because the original demand was greater.
This covenant was written as a statewide exclusion from work in a whole competing business, not as a measured transition plan. Its defects involve all three required dimensions, and the hearing did not supply the missing relationship between those dimensions and a demonstrated need. Consistent with Fawcett, the Court should decline to revise it and hold it invalid. We respectfully request denial of Industrial’s requested injunction so Morgan may continue his work at Columbia Coatings.