Keep Up with Current Employment Law Issues

The faithless servant rule is grounded in the law of agency and provides a tool that employers can use to try to claw back all compensation paid to a former employee upon demonstrating that the employee repeatedly engaged in disloyal and unfaithful conduct during the term of his or her employment.

At the risk of stating the very obvious, a severance agreement should contain a release which protects the former employer from potential lawsuits and other legal proceedings that could otherwise be brought by the former employee and his or her heirs. Severance compensation can serve as an important transition financial resource for a former employee. Thus, it is often in both parties’ interests to reach an agreement.

What is a Restrictive Covenant?
Our last blog article provided an update on the state of New York law concerning non-compete provisions. This article focuses on the state of New York law concerning restrictive covenant provisions other than non-competes. As our readers are almost certainly all well aware, a restrictive covenant is a contractual provision that many employers include in employment and severance agreements as well as in contracts with respect to the sale of a business. Such provisions are designed to limit the activities of a former employee or a former owner of a company for a fixed period of time following the end of the employment relationship or after the sale of a company to protect the former employer’s or buyer’s supposed legitimate business interests. In addition to employment, severance, and agreements concerning the sale of a business, these covenants can often be found in stock option agreements.