Opinion ID: 1986699
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Solicitation of Employees

Text: The court below found as a fact that the individual appellees did not solicit ORI's employees either while Davidson and Talbird were employed by ORI or after their employment ended, but that such employees sought out Davidson and Talbird and were anxious to work for them. Again, we find that these factual conclusions were supported by substantial evidence and were not clearly wrong. Davidson was in charge of ORI's Logistics and Operations Division, to which substantially all of its commercial work was assigned; Talbird was program director of that division. Davidson resigned from ORI at the conclusion of a management control meeting on Friday afternoon, December 4, Talbird resigned the next morning, Saturday, December 5. Cook called a meeting of all ORI's commercial section employees within two hours; the nature of that meeting has been set forth. That afternoon, most of the other individual appellees and nearly all the other employees in ORI's commercial section gathered at Davidson's residence. Jankowitz asked whether the new concern would accept employment applications and was given an affirmative answer. All but two of those who came wrote employment applications to the new firm; those two, who are among the individual appellees, became employees of the new concern within a few days. With the exception of one man who was not called by either ORI or the appellees, each applicant testified that no appellee solicited his application. Davidson and Talbird testified to the same effect. The applications were made without specifications as to salary or type of work. ORI points to the fact that virtually all the employees of its commercial division came to Davidson's house immediately after he and Talbird had resigned and asked for employment with the proposed new enterprise as strong evidence that there must have been prior solicitation by the individual appellees of other key employees before the resignations. But the argument cuts both ways. The mass resignations and the requests for employment with Davidson and Talbird in the company they were going to form can also be interpreted as evidencing concern of the employees about their future with ORI without Davidson and Talbird and confidence in the ability of those two men to form and conduct a successful new operation in which the prospects of the employees would be brighter. There is much testimony in the record to support this interpretation. Clearly, the other employees in the commercial division had known, for some months, of Davidson's and Talbird's dissatisfaction with the ORI management. During the fall of 1964, ORI had no commercial work other than that it was then completing for Coca-Cola and Southern. The other employees in the division of course were aware of the close professional and personal association of Davidson and Talbird with these two concerns; an assumption that, if Davidson and Talbird left ORI, the two companies would become their customers, was reasonable. There was testimony that the employees were concerned about their future with ORI if and when Davidson and Talbird resigned; they had no term employment. It was Cook who announced the resignations; news that some of the employees were going to Davidson's house quickly spread after that meeting, and it was not unnatural under the circumstances that a general gathering developed. That no terms of individual employment were spelled out in the applications may well be taken only as evidencing the confidence of the employees in the men under whom they had worked and in the probabilities of success of the proposed new enterprise. Parent's conversation with Talbird a few days before the resignation about being tired, in which Parent testified Talbird told him there was the probability that Talbird and Davidson were going to leave ORI and start a corporation does not, of itself, prove solicitation. An announcement of intent to leave, particularly when, as here, the dissatisfaction had been known, may, permissibly, plant a seed but is not evidence of its watering. Nor does the fact that Parent, on the afternoon of December 4, apparently immediately after Davidson's resignation, made an inquiry to the telephone company for service to a consulting and research firm in Bethesda that would employ 10 to 12 people, necessarily mean that Davidson and Talbird knew the new company would have that number of employees. The telephone company was not asked to make actual installations until December 7. There was testimony on behalf of ORI that, on December 3 or 4, Jankowitz had told several employees the names of other men who had agreed to join the proposed firm and the date of their probable resignations. Jankowitz testified that he had been dissatisfied during the last 14 months of his employment by ORI and had discussed his possible resignation with a number of his co-employees. He denied knowing of any other employees who would go with the new organization before he himself made application after the resignations, and explained his reference to a drastic change in December on the basis that December is the time for changes in ORI and that every year people quit or were fired at that time. In his comment on this phase of the evidence, Judge Pugh pointed out that while Jankowitz admitted that he had talked about leaving ORI with other employees, and while seven of ORI's witnesses testified they had talked to Jankowitz, [n]one of these seven testified that the defendants, Davidson and Talbird, offered them positions with the new corporation or solicited them to come with the new corporation. In his opinion, on the general issue of solicitation, Judge Pugh said: Even if the plaintiff's evidence alone were sufficient to establish a prima facie case, the defendants called sixteen witnesses, being the four defendants and twelve other witnesses, including the witness Fuchs, the plaintiff's co-counsel who was called primarily to form the basis for the introduction of O.R.I. records, all of whom except Fuchs, deny the allegations of solicitation of the plaintiff's employees and any conspiracy to harm the plaintiff. Such evidence on the part of the defendants therefore leaves little doubt on the proof of the issues herein. The Judge's belief in the credibility of the appellees' witnesses is evident and that is a belief to which we give weight.