am and i'd like to begin this morning with the tortious interference claim there the in holding that that c r c could not show as a matter of law that trans am caused c r s he has drivers to breach their contracts the courts most fundamental error was in failing to separately analyze causation for the breach of the non compete provision of the contract or otherwise to take into account that the contracts were not at will the district court was solely focused on the question of whether what trans am did cause the drivers to leave their employment with the r s c but that was not the relevant question the relevant question was whether what trans am did caused the drivers to breach their contracts with c r s t and there it is critical to separate out the two contractual obligations that those drivers had st as to the non compete obligation the causation question essential he answers itself the obligation was not to go work for a competitor during the ten month restrictive term offer of employment to those drivers is necessarily the but for cause by which they breached their obligation not to go work for a competitor the district court wholly failed to take into account the non compete provision and did not obligations the district court never analyze that at all and their restatement seven hundred and sixty eight says that where an employee is subject to a non compete obligation even if the competitor is justified in inducing the employee to leave their employment the competitor is not justified in engaging the employee to work in a job that would mean violation of the non compete obligation what is that the court to as you know the district didn't actually reach the improper conduct element but we gave the district court and have briefed before this court numerous cases in which it is held that it is improper to to to hire away an employee that you know to be subject to a non compete obligation and i would point the court to the to the magic valley case where where the court says in order to be liable for interference with a non competition covenant it is not necessary that the new employer actively induce the employ the to leave his former position the issue of paramount importance is whether the new employer with knowledge of the co engaged the employee to work for him in an activity that would mean violation of the contract not to know what is the evidence of the knowledge here so your honor there are at least five ways that trans am is on knowledge of the contract so st tr  am is obligated by d o t regulations to verify the prior employment of the drivers so trans am sends an inquiry to c r s t and serious he sends back a form form response that says this driver is under contract with c r s c sirus he then follows up nd with a letter specifically about that employee and says this employee is under contract with c r s t we are not releasing this employee from their obligation matter further on that point though my understanding is literally every single employee even if they weren't under contract was viewed as being under contract with c r s t and so they literally got a positive response on every single employee they verified your hon r the only drivers that are at issue in this case the one hundred and sixty seven dollars drivers are drivers that left within the ten month term of their contract and so it is true that c r c does spend that form response with respect to any c competitor during those ten months the employee can buy out of either of those obligations by paying back the training costs and maybe it's worth just taking a step back for a moment to to set sort of a context here of of the program that is going on which is that serious he has developed an innovative solution to the problem of a chronic shortage of drivers in the long haul trucking industry c i s c operates its own driver training program whereby it pays upfront all of the costs for students to attend the driver training program and obtain their commercial driver's license in return and this allows people who otherwise would not have the means to obtain a cd yelled suit to do so in want to get get back to the legal issues because i understand the way that it's set up in the differences and that and the way those those two businesses do their conduct their trucking operations but what about the fact that trans am didn't just target c r s to employees vision goes more towards targeting the employees of a competitor rather than this situation what's your response to that is so you're on i want to be clear that what we're talking about is not the general advertising that's not what we're saying is where the breach occurs the breach that occurs is when an offer to the employee to come work for trans am knowing that that employee is subject to both a fixed term and a non compete obligation and to add on to my answer earlier to your honor about the notice that that tra am had it's not only that that form responds it's also a letter and that letter actually refers back to western district of oklahoma case the j behind case in which the court upheld cirrus t s restrictive  covenants and enjoined another trucking company from doing what trans am is trying to do here the rd way that trans amazon notices of course the j b one case itself the parties are presuming to know the wall and that that is am that is at the at the it's attached to our complaint at the in the unsealed appendix at page thirty one dollars and then finally there's the complaint itself in this case and trans am continues to i'm saying that all these groups and we don't hear about the injunction i mean i did a lot of restrictive covenant cases not in iowa in private practice in this this is not of the typical way they arise  typically the if you seek damages against an individual employee that the new employer is effectively on the hook because they've conant to reimburse the employee if  liability for breach of covenant but it didn't arise that way here and i can't are is the idaho court of appeals the only court you could find in the country that had an interference with contract in this district of covenant situation holding for them that it is not intentional interference with contract to it to hire away an employee who is subject to a non computer obligation what trans am has in their brief they say in footnote sixteen that this is the only only place where they actually deal with the fact that these employees are not it will be you you can see that for how many drivers do you have to prove to win your injunction breached their covenant in holdings and dicta is a term that came to mind when i looked at this and thought about this case there are no cases that talk about whether freewriting is improper under under the in or the restatement standard well your hon interference liability your honor what has been litigated is is hiring away an employee that is subject to a non compete obligation or just hiring away an employee that has made a commitment and that goes back to the eight hundred and fifty three case of  job and so the covenants are either stricken or narrowed or found to be not violated so you're kind of end running the bulk of the precedent in this running the precedent and were not at the precedent that they cite so i'll point the court to the present that they say they say look there are actually lots of cases where employers are held not liable for interfering with a contract that as generous or unique so don't tell me what common says and you know the general law is the neither side i want to know what the courts have said about about restrictive covenant claims the claim asserted is intentional breach of contract which is not typical i believe so your honor what the courts say and and i understand your honor doesn't want to hear what common says but it is actually summarizing the nine complete cases going to it says one who hires an employee with knowledge that the employment will violate a covenant not to compete is liable for damages and should also be enjoined it is not necessary to show any inducement other than the fact that the subsequent employer assigned the employee to engage in an activity which the subsequent employer knew would require a violation of the covenant not to compete and i think your honor what's also critical to understand here is that the district court just stopped at the cause ation analysis we're simply talking about the cause an analysis and the error in the district court's opinion what the district court held was that as a matter of law serious teeth could not show that what trans am did caused the drivers to breach their contract but with respect to the nine compete obligation that simply the logic doesn't follow of course an employee cannot violate the non computer obligation of their contract without an offer of employment from the competitor and so at least with respect to the non compete obligation we think that the district courts and now assess was in error and we want to stress that even if the court accepts the district court reasoning as to the fixed term obligation it simply cannot cannot affirm on the basis that the district court didn't even analyze the non compete provision i want to follow up on the thing you just said it sounds like you're saying but for causation but my understanding of the district court's opinion was it was proximate cause so you're right that but for the offer of employment they potentially want to breach the contract allegedly breach the contract but i understood the district to be saying something different that that wasn't the proximate cause of a damage and that and that's why i think the district court got itself sort of hung up but actually i want follows traditional but for causation principles and the offer of employment is necessarily the but for cause of the breach of the non computer obligation if the court has no further questions i'll reserve the balance of my time for a bottle please the court ok my name's brenda hamilton and i'm here on behalf of the apollonian cross of helen transom trucking inc with my co counsel jews julie priest and i'd like to start by saying trans am is requesting respectfully that this summary judgment that the district court granted to it on the the tortious interference claim as well as the unjust enrichment claim specifically focusing on the causation issue that the court decided the summary judgment on with respect to the tortious interference claim i think it's clear from the record that there are no no facts no evidence at all that serious t's been able to point to that would show that trans am intentionally induced the drivers to priests or contracts or that trans am improperly interfered with those contracts both of those elements are required under longstanding iowa law as well as the restatement nd of torts section seven  contract claim they have to show intentional inducement that was noted in the rail intermodal case and israel intermodal special forces g e capital here looking at the intentional inducement part of the elements that have to be shown die do i agree with that there is no evidence in the record that will show that i didn't say it as a fact i asked if you thought if your argument was including that because the as i understand it your client pays the a new driver six thousand to reimburse for his his training if he hasn't been trained by a competitor is that you're talking about the tuition reimbursement program the trans am has in place i believe either what is it what does am necessarily saves anything when it does that with respect to experienced drivers how can that not be on the record well i don't think it is in the record your honor don't think that i don't think trans am is necessarily saving saving money in this and why has it taking the risk of this lawsuit you know your honor the what trans am is trying on with other competitors i gather who trans am is really just trying to compete in the marketplace and what these cases come down to his wrongful conduct others fair and there's unfair competition i agree with that your honor and in this case what i what we're saying is that there's no evidence in the record to show that trans am did anything that was improper or wrong and focusing on the inducement part  case before you move on though opposing counsel asked a question along the lines of what you're saying now which is there's no direct advertising to c r s the employers as general advertising they say it doesn't matter because once we told them that these these employees were under contract with c r s t v and knew that they had a nine compete clause hiring them was improper in and of itself what's your response to that i think that that particular issue knowledge i think you right it specifies it's talking about at will contract there are two sections carves out and says we're not addressing fixed term kind interference with fixed term contracts items of interference i think if you i think when you look at that language and compare what the nd paragraph which is where that language is i think you're referring to and compare that to what's in the st paragraph where they carve out the at will contract and  a no on at will contract if you will and serious to use cited one of the comments in seven hundred and sixty eight to suggest that somehow that that allows some sort of an automatic  the other rules specifically the law is clear in the restatement is clear that if all you're doing is hiring an individual knowing that they're under contract with someone else whether that's a fixed term covenant or a non compete that's not enough to establish inducement it's also not out of you mention not compete there their argument is not only are are you free riding on employees that have a fixed term contract but you have a nine compete agreement and trans am knows that so what's the significance of any of the n compete portion of the contract well i think it's no different than a fixed term would be here and section seven hundred and sixty eight wouldn't apply there anyway at all you still have to show inducements section seven hundred and sixty eight does not excuse the need to meet all of the iowa that says otherwise i also want to try to i don't i think this is over reliance on the very ambiguous and often the internally inconsistent comments in the three restatement provisions was a and in that case the court dismissed a tortious interference claim because the plaintiff had failed to establish that there were enforceable covenant compete covenants so that is a case where the to interference claim failed in the iowa office supply case because if that if that's the holding than the district court erred here because it didn't get that far if that's was that if that was the only basis for dismissing the tortious interference that you didn't prove there was a covenant that was breached that we have a converse here at least so far well i think the court should mean you have to you have to win your  argument that that imposing a covenant in order to save costs as opposed to protecting your your your drivers milk truck drivers are the th century examples of these cases but that that this business notion that a business interest does not include protect recovering costs that's an that's a nonstarter well you want to talk talking now a ten month covenant the reason is because the only protectable interest that the serious t is pointed to is that it wants to protect its training here the training costs and it wants to protect the fact that it is has debt that these drive the driving  school glossary that it wants to recover why isn't that a a it's a clearly a business interest and what's on reasonable about it well life i find it a lot i think the law says something different your honor i think the law in iowa says that you cannot protect training costs that's not a case the court refused to enforce restrictive covenants because what was being protected there the protectable interest that was that issue was training costs that have been used to train the employees that case involved overhead door service service men and they had come to the plaintiff employer with no prior experience that received retained training from the employer for two years had been sent to get instruction in leading to or industry education in welding instruction on the job instructions and so forth what the court determined was they the employer could not  properly use a non compete to protect the fact that it would spend his time and money to train these individuals because they were just being trained to do ordinary work so it refused to enforce restrictive covenants and it said under iowa law you have to show that you've trained them to do unique an extraordinary skills and if you just train them to do ordinary work that's not enough so the course said no no protectable interest therefore these restrictive covenants aren't enforceable and we're not we're not going to work we're not going to enforce them that's that case is a very good authority here because that's all that happened here is the drivers were not trained to do any unique or extraordinary skills it's ordinary work even a truck i think that's very good authority here for why that is not to protect the interest and when it comes to protecting using a non compete or using a non compete and fixed term to try to protect the debt that these drivers each had incurred in owed something like six thousand five hundred dollars a serious t has identified that is one of its protectable interest to and simply trying to use a restrictive covenant to employees i believe that's correct yes but reflects the judicial intolerance of trying to prevent people from earning a living but the i will law is still the same in terms of do you have a protected will interest or not you too late if a framework for a breach th interference claim against the competitor yeah i buy i'm not aware of any cases that necessarily say that you would make it in terms of evaluating the protectable interest what they are not you whether you would look at the employer in a different situation than the employees oftentimes they are before the court at the same time the protect the bill interest either is there or not is either a legitimate restrictive covenant or it's not an opposition in this case is that it's overbroad and therefore it's illegal as a matter of law because it's an illegal restraint of trade which gets into the void voidable issue that we brief for the court our position trans ams position is that this is unreasonable when it was not overbroad well i mean limited to the training period the only overbred theory would be would be timing it's not the geography geographic overbrook that most most common cases involve well we could go down that path as well and talk about the geographic broadness and i did want to point out though that the ten month period does not track the there's no evidence that that tracks the training period the training period that we're talking about is really during the training school period which is before they even start doing the job so that they do some training they go to driving school that would be a that would be a jury aargh well i don't know that it would necessarily be a jury argument your honor i think whether or not a restrictive covenant is and forcible is  matter is an issue for of law for the court but you had made the comment that you thought that the ten months tracked the training period and i do not think that's what the record shows in this instance which is another reason why  it's unreasonable so i just want to back up probationary period of it from the truck in the trucking industry well i i can't comment on that you're i don't think that that evidence is within the record necessarily not sure that that's accurate  the record doesn't reflect anything on that as far as i'm aware to just sort of back up a minute i wanted to go back and point out that our our argument is really focused on when it comes to that void voidable issue and whether or not there's an in forcible contract which is a one of the elements as well that that issue turns on a whether or not there's a protective wall interest the two that we mentioned in already talked about protecting training costs protecting that so did them by the drivers are the two that have been identified and as a matter of law i don't think that the law will hold up that those are actually protecting the interest and something that the court itself can decide  want to turn our attention to the unjust enrichment claim and respectfully request that the court upholding around a summary judgment to trans am on the unjust enrichment claim as well there on that district court reasoning was was the have had it with their well that was the alternative ground there was the there was the major ground there was a showing of that of unjust enrichment well i we don't believe got the tortious interference claim the decision on summary judgment on the tortious interference claim right and balance that claim that would take care of the unjust enrichment claim as well because you have to show some sort of a unjust u in whatever respect they can't establish a tortious interference claim i think that claim fails which means the end just enrichment claim would fail as well tortious interference as a as a whole require some kind of improper conduct generally speaking anyway and it's also obviously one of the specific elements so i think if it fails on any grounds then then the whole thing falls and the unjust richmond claim as well the other thing i wanted to mention about the justin richmond claim is that in this situation it's not that serious t conferred a benefit on trans am rather what happened is the drivers have conferred a benefit if anybody has on trans am because they risk even the training and they take that training with them under iowa law one who has general knowledge and skills and whenever an employer gets from working from one employer they get to take those to the other employer and here that's exactly what serious t did this consistent with the law and then the the other thing i wanted to mention is that what they're seeking here is too serious to use to discords trans ams profits from from having hired draw drivers that were already trained the problem with that is under the  iowa there really has to be a readily identifiable benefit under the cases that seems to be pretty clear and here there isn't any readily identifiable benefit you can't really point to any specific profits nor nor tuition if they are trained at schools other than c r s t v or a competitor school but not to provide tuition reimbursement to those who come from from a competitor and so it's serious she pays all  that counsel relied on there is no evidence at all in that record in the the court actually says in the dan's overhead case that there's no evidence that there's a scarcity of employees to fill the job here it's well documented in the record that there is scarcity of employees to to fill that job i want to turn also to the council's claim that some additional form of inducement is required above and beyond making an offer to an employee that the employer know subject to a non compete obligation your honor we have cited to you i would i would love to be able to say to you and i our case there is not an i r case on point but we have cited to you the magic valley case the phallus case the fowler case itself cites a number of cases the common treatise the risk statements seven hundred and sixty eight comment i all of these are clear and again i just just want to quote from the restatement seven hundred and sixty eight i that bet an employer may be excuse me that a defendant engaged in the same business might induce the employee to quit his job but he would not be justified in engaging the employee to work for him in an activity that would mean violation of the contract no compete and so the trans am has cited no cases that hold that it is ok for a employer to knowingly poaching employee subject to a non compete obligation and has  ment or otherwise the essential thing is the intent to cause the results and here i don't think there can be any question that when trans am in this tight labor market where it is trying to get  drivers that are trained without having to outweigh the costs of those drivers training makes an offer to a serious t employee trans am intends to cause that employee to violate their her non compete obligation aristide thank you your honor thank you counsel cases been thoroughly briefed and well argued and complex issues will take it under advisement