Okay, I need a few other opinions. My husband has been working for a company in town for about 4.5 years now. He signed an employment agreement (as all employees of this small company do) when they start work there. From my little law knowledge I am not sure that asking someone to give 90 days notice to terminate employment would hold up in court. The sue all employees that do not give the proper notice, all the ex-employees have settled so we dont know if something so ridiculous would hold up. There are a lot of crazy things in the employment agreement - like 3 years where they cant work for a competitor, or cant do any work along the lines of what they are doing now... but this is the part we'd like to get around the most. How can he look for a new job with this in his contract? Let me know if any of yall have an opinion. Thanks.

The nocompete clause in Oklahoma does not stand up in court. Been there done that.. I am not sure that is where he is but if that is in his contract they wont get any where with that..

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"You can't fix stupid it's foreverrrrrrrrr!!" Ron White

I believe HottCutz is right. Many smaller micro managed companies try this ploy. Sort of like when a business has a patron sign a "I will not sue you if I get hurt" agreement. Locally a bar/restaurant had a mechanical bull a long time ago and made every rider sign the agreement. One day a girl was hurt when she fell off and sued and won.

You used to see these agreements in private schools. Instructors who left were able to argue that you cannot keep someone from plying their trade.

What you can limit is trade secrets, client lists and specific performance.

As for a 90-day notice- no way. Your employer has a right to terminate you anytime and for no reason at all. An employee has the same right to quit.

If he's worked there for several years hen he can easil argue that is his trade. Being uch he has a right to work anywhere that will hire him.

He just can't take his customer rolodex or any other property that belongsto his former employer.

That's right, because that kind of agreement is called an "exculpatory agreement" that tries to pre-emptively exonerate a company from it's own negligence. You can't exculpate yourself from your own negligence. What most places WILL try, however, is to liquidate damages arising from the negligence, with something like "if a court of competent jurisidiction holds <whomever> to be negligent, then the signee hereunto agrees that all damages arising from such negligence shall be liquidated in the sum of $1". Put simply, yeah ,you can be negligent, but we've agreed in advance that your damages are $1 regardless of your actual damages. Some states don't allow liquidated damages, though..

I think several local TV news personalities have, over the years, had some sort of "noncompete" clauses in their contracts to preent them from going to other stations, but won when they went to court against the former station that employed them. The "non-compete" clause sounds scary, but a former employer generally can't keep you from working.

Most employment agreements are "at-will," just as BailJumper noted. They can fire you without cause for any reason at any time, and you can quit without cause at any time. As far as that "90 day notice goes," chances are there's another part of that same employment agreement that specifies damages to the employer if an employee breaches the 90-day notice. If the company has successfully sued former employees in a similar manner, that may be the hammer they use to negotiate out-of-court settlements. In practical terms, though, an employer would have to show actual damages arising from that breach, and those might be less tangible - eg loss of an experienced worker, loss of corporate knowledge or skill at a given position. Hard to put a dollar figure on those kinds of things.

Check that employment agreement carefully for penalties arising from somone quitting without the 90-day written notice. If they've gone so far as to put that kind of language in there, they've probably tried to think about penalties for violators as well.

-SoonerDave

Thanks for the advice.

It does state in the contract that they seek a 3 months salary if you do not give the 90 day notice. They say that it hurts their business because they do not have enough time to fill the position. It is a specialized field and finding quality employees is hard - would this help it hold up?

No ex-employee has ever battled the contract... they all end up settling for somewhere around $5,000. Which is what a lawyer would prob cost, right?

I'm not an attorney, so I can't say defnitively if it would or would not hold up, but darned sure looks to me as a layperson that they'll come to a potential departing employee and say, "fine, your penalty for breaching is $xxx, but you can get out for <some negotiated sum>." The language of that contract clause sounds pretty plain.

The only way a clause like that might be challenged is if the employer engaged in some sort of empirically illegal activity, like violations of EEOC, hostile work environment, and if that were the case AND it were properly documented (absolutely critical), that might be "reverse leverage" that could be casually tossed out in the hopes of getting out for less or no money in a negotiation. If the employer weren't concerned about that type of "dirty laundry" airing in court, he might be willing to risk a judgment against him that consituted a breach of some other section of the employment contract, eg violation of public law or policy by either party, or language to that effect.

You can liken that roughly to a rental agreement in which there's a penalty if the renter leaves the lease early, but the renter contends that the landlord created what's called a "constructive eviction" by making the rented property essentially unusable in some way. If the employer made the conditions of employment intolerable in some way, one might be able to create an argument about a "constructive termination" on the part of the employer; that is, if they made what might be termed unreasonable or impossible demands of the employee, making it in essence impossible to perform the duties of the job, you might say the employer "constructively" terminated you first, and as a result the penalty clause is not applicable.

Like I said, I am not an attorney (though part of me sure wishes I were....alas) so someone who is might read the above paragraph and puke in his oatmeal for its utter stupidity. I do, however, think it's safe to say that in most cases you'd be hard pressed to escape the terms of the improper termination penalty short of negotiation or an affirmative argument for prior termination by the employer. And I darned sure would get any agreement as a result of that negoation in very specific writing.

It isn't impossible to fight an employment contract, but its darned difficult with all the attorneys stacked against you. I know there were at least a few issues recently regarding employment contracts with a certain school district, one in which a district attempted to enjoin an instructor from leaving their position for a similar position in a different district. The individual supposedly presented considerable evidence to demonstrate that the school district had failed to perform certain obligations that were supposedly made part of their prior contract, and made it clear to the district that they had no problem making the details of their "breach" as public as possible if they pursued their efforts to block other employment. The district released the instructor from their contract.

Good luck.

-SoonerDave

The 90 day notice is likely to hold up because it is not one-sided to the employer with them having to likewise give 90 day notice.

Oklahoma is an at-will employment state but employment contacts can alter the at-will status.

Non-compete agreements which are written correctly can hold up in Oklahoma.

One day I was in the Drive-Thru at McDonalds and saw a sign up by the break room in the restaurant that said something similar to that. I can't remember how long the notification time was but I remember thinking it was ridiculous and wondering how exactly you sue someone for not wanting to work for you anymore. It's hard for me to believe that a company as huge as McDonalds would waste their time and money on something so petty.

Actually it all depends on what line of work and how it is worded. Most do not competes get struck down but there are some that are upheld.

On Edit: I thought about typing somethign about changing the status of an employee from At-Will to a contractual labour or something along those lines. It appears from the limited document supplied that the agreement is not an At-Will agreement since both parties bargained away their rights to immediately terminate the employment relationship. But other portions of the document might swing the analysis in the other direction.