re: OT lawyers:Can a non-compete in Louisiana restrict me from working in every single parish?

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This question gets asked here a lot and everytime the thread is full of wrong answers from non lawyers or lawyers who don't deal with this shite. Pay someone for real advice.

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This!!! Some of the responses in this thread have horrified me.

call the official injury lawyers of the lsu tigers.

stop asking for free advice on a message board(this is not legal advice)

Does the non-competition agreement seek to restrict a puke W-2 or an individual who sold his/her business? This is the first question you should ask. That will be $495USD.

I am sure this has been mentioned but what is the subject matter? I haven't studied La law specifically in years, but typically the more limited and specialized the field the broader it can be geographically/temporally.

And most states I think now have some form of blue-pencil law that allows the court to omit the unenforceable provisions but keep the rest. I personally think those are kind of bullshite unless there's some overarching good-faith/reasonableness analysis. If we are going regulate contractual restraints on trade, then we shouldn't allow gamesmanship. E.g., making someone sign a super restrictive non-compete knowing it's unenforceable but sort of throwing it at the wall to see what sticks.

What was the question?

Assuming the rest of the NCA is perfect, you can be restricted from soliciting in any parish in which your previous employer has a physical presence or a substantial amount of customers.

Now stop being a cheap arse and bring the actual document to someone who does this kind of work for a living.

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And most states I think now have some form of blue-pencil law that allows the court to omit the unenforceable provisions but keep the rest

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This is how LA courts should handle the 64 Parish provision. That is, assuming the non-compete provision is otherwise valid, I expect most courts would limit the geographical scope of the non-compete to parishes where the company is actively doing business (or, perhaps, where it actively targets business, clients etc.). The court basically rewrites the provision to reflect a fair/accurate geographic restriction.

It’d be wise to check the entire contract for a clause with terms like severability or reformation (concepts like the blue pencil doctrine). Or anything that addresses unenforceable or void/voidable contract terms.

The courts will not rewrite everything though, eg won’t rewrite a 3 year noncompete to 2 years as to make the time restraint enforceable. Theyll just reject the entire clause.

It’s possible they’ll do the same and just void the non-compete outright b/c of the Parish list. But they’d likely first assess how blatantly unreasonable/oppressive the geographical scope is, and whether there is a severability-like clause allowing modification of unenforceable provisions as necessary to make enforceable or to accomplish the parties’ intent.

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He lost big time! Ended up having to pay his former employer a lot of money.

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Any fire marshal worth his salt will tell you that isopropyl alcohol burns sufficiently clean, compared to other accelerants, that no useful residue will be left for their investigation.

Do they want the building burned down? Because shite like this is how you get the building burned down.

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And most states I think now have some form of blue-pencil law that allows the court to omit the unenforceable provisions but keep the rest


This is how LA courts should handle the 64 Parish provision. That is, assuming the non-compete provision is otherwise valid, I expect most courts would limit the geographical scope of the non-compete to parishes where the company is actively doing business (or, perhaps, where it actively targets business, clients etc.). The court basically rewrites the provision to reflect a fair/accurate geographic restriction.

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I hate this concept. I don’t think they should void a contract over a missed punctuation mark but the idea of the court rewriting/limiting a contract to make it enforceable is just wrong. Taken to the extreme, I could see a non compete that said: “Following termination of employment, the former employee is not allowed to be employed in any industry anywhere for a period of two years.” Now, let the Court work that down to the maximum legally enforceable parameters. Why is the Court in the business of editing contracts? Either it is a valid document or it isn’t. I thought that was the Courts job to decide.

Everyone gets out of noncompetes. Usually your new employer will find a way out. They are there more to scare the employee instead of being actually enforced.