Court Opinion

ID: 9761576
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 01:46:09.558819+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:24.651799
License: Public Domain

MAUZY, Justice,
concurring.
The Court takes pains to avoid overruling Hill v. Mobile Auto Trim, Inc., 725 S.W.2d 168 (Tex.1987), and Bergman v. Norris of Houston, 734 S.W.2d 673 (Tex.1987) and I am therefore able to concur in the Court’s judgment. However, by even discussing these cases, the Court reaches too far.
In Hill and Bergman, “[w]e specifically rejected from being enforceable covenants restricting the right to engage in a common calling.” Bergman, 734 S.W.2d at 674. In the instant case, however, the noncompetition agreement is unenforceable without regard to whether it restricts the right to engage in a common calling. Thus, the Court’s discussion of the common calling doctrine is unnecessary, gratuitous and ill-advised. Is this not the very definition of “judicial activism”?
I disagree, too, with the Court’s conclusion that “the Legislature has now rejected common calling as a test for the reasonableness of noncompetition agreements.” 793 S.W.2d at 683. The statute in ques*690tion, Tex.Bus. & Com.Code § 15.50, effective in 1989, provides in part that “a covenant not to compete is enforceable to the extent that it ... contains reasonable limitations as to time, geographical area, and scope of activity to be restrained.” The “scope of activity” language, in my view, leaves adequate room for the continued vitality of the common calling doctrine. In any case, this is not a question the Court needs to decide today.
Finally, I must make two comments regarding the Court’s complaint that we have not previously provided a comprehensive definition of “common calling”. First, reasonably precise definitions have been formulated. See e.g., C.L. Ray & M. McKelvey, Drafting Enforceable Noncompetition Agreements in Texas, 20 Tex.Tech L.Rev. 63, 68 (1989); W. White, Common Callings and the Enforcement of Postemployment Covenants in Texas, 19 St. Mary’s L.J. 589, 611 (1988). Second, it is the genius of the common law that it evolves slowly in the light of reason and experience. I am content to allow the common calling concept to be worked out on a case-by-case basis.
SPEARS, J., joins in this concurring opinion.