Employers seeking to limit employees from taking customers with them to new jobs should consider including “garden leave” provisions in their form employment agreements, in addition to or in place of the more traditional non-compete and non-solicitation covenants. A garden leave clause requires an employee to provide a certain period of notice to the employer before voluntarily terminating employment (usually 30-60 days) and restricts the employee from competing against his or her employer during the notice period.  During the notice period, the employee is paid full salary and benefits and is usually directed not to report to work during the notice period. Thus, the  “garden leave” term comes from the notion that, at least metaphorically, the employee will stay at home and tend to his garden during the restricted period, while the employer secures relationships with its customers before the employee goes to work for a competitor.

The potential benefit to garden leave clauses is that they are viewed more favorably by Courts from an enforcement standpoint because the employee is still being paid during the restricted period. Because the concept is relatively new in the United States (as opposed to its common use in the United Kingdom), there is not a lot of case law guidance about their enforceability.   As with non-competes, the law controlling these provisions is very jurisdiction-specific.  For example, garden leave provisions have been regularly enforced in New York. See Estee Lauder Co. v. Batra, 430 F. Supp. 2d 158, 182 (S.D.N.Y. 2006) (granting preliminary injunction of five months against employee in charge of developing strategies for certain brands of employer’s skin care products and finding that risk of employee’s “loss of livelihood is entirely mitigated by the fact that [employer] will continue to pay [his] salary of $375,000 per year for the duration of the ‘sitting out’ period”); Ayco Co., L.P. v. Frisch, 795 F. Supp. 2d 193, 197 (N.D.N.Y 2011) (granting preliminary injunction against employee financial advisors and finding that agreement by employees to “give [employer] ninety days notice of termination, during which time they would remain . . . employees and continue to receive their base salary or salary draw, but would no longer participate in [employer’s] compensation plan” was enforceable).

The law in the Southeast is significantly less developed.  The last word in Georgia, for instance, came in Carvalho v. Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 80651 (N.D. Ga. October 31, 2007).  Carvalho indicates that courts applying Georgia law may view garden leave provisions less favorably than those applying New York law.  In Carvalho, the Northern District of Georgia considered the enforceability of a garden leave provision, which provided that the employees were entitled to their base salary and benefits during an unspecified notice period.  The court denied a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction, reasoning that “[t]he income of these employees is substantially higher than their base salary [and] the employer has the ability to significantly reduce their income and prohibit them from working for another employer of any kind during the notice period.”  The Court also expressed doubt as to whether the covenant was enforceable in light of Georgia’s at will employment standard codified at O.C.G.A. § 34-7-1, reasoning that “because the employee may resign at any time, the Court questions whether he can be ordered to continue in his employment, especially under less favorable terms of employment.”

BURR POINT: Employers should consider adding garden leave provisions in addition to or in place of non-compete provisions in employment contracts.

If you would like to add a garden leave provision to your employee agreements, the Burr & Forman team would be happy to assist you. Please contact us at any time.