Court Opinion

ID: 9742048
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 21:05:49.875274+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:28.143257
License: Public Domain

SUNDBY, J.
(dissenting). I conclude that the covenant not to compete contained in Kobs's employment *437contract is reasonable as a matter of law. I therefore dissent from our mandate insofar as we remand the cause to try the issue of reasonableness. I would direct the trial court to grant summary judgment to General Medical Corporation.
I agree with the majority that the trial court erred when it concluded that the covenant not to compete was invalid per se because it did not contain a territorial limitation. In Rollins Burdick Hunter of Wisconsin, Inc. v. Hamilton, 101 Wis. 2d 460, 467, 304 N.W.2d 752, 755 (1981), the court said: "[W]e hold that the territorial limitation of a restrictive covenant need not be expressed in geographic terms as an absolute prerequisite to a valid and enforceable agreement."
The majority concludes that Hunter requires that "the parties must be given a full opportunity to develop the necessary evidentiary record." Id. at 471, 304 N.W.2d at 757. However, in Hunter, the noncompetition agreements prohibited the employees from soliciting, contacting or otherwise doing any competitive business with "any individual, firm, corporation, partnership, organization or association who was a customer or client of Agency" during the prescribed period. (Emphasis added.) The covenant not to compete in Kobs's employment contract, however, only prohibits him from soliciting, selling or rendering services to:
[A]ny of the customers solicited, sold to or serviced by me at any time during the 18 months immediately preceding termination of my employment with [General Medical Corporation], with respect to any product or service similar to or competitive with any product or service sold or offered for sale by [General Medical Corporation].
*438The Hunter court could not determine on the record before it whether the noncompetition agreements at issue were reasonable because the covenant was so broad. The court said: "We come to the principal issue of the case which is whether the instant agreements are invalid per se because they purport to prohibit [the employees] from soliciting even [the employer's] clients whom they had not serviced and with whom they had had no contact." Id. at 467, 304 N.W.2d at 755 (emphasis added). The restrictive covenant at issue in this case does not prohibit Kobs from contacting or servicing General Medical Corporation's customers that he had not previously serviced.
This case is more similar to Chuck Wagon Catering, Inc. v. Raduege, 88 Wis. 2d 740, 277 N.W.2d 787 (1979), than it is to Hunter. In Chuck Wagon, the employee serviced a lunch route which Chuck Wagon had established and maintained as its own for six years. Over the two and one-half year period during which he acted as Chuck Wagon's agent, the employee had daily contact with the customers at each stop on the route. The court construed the restrictive covenant in Chuck Wagon to prohibit the employee from soliciting Chuck Wagon's former customers until its new drivers had an opportunity to become acquainted with the customers. Id. at 754, 277 N.W.2d at 793. The court concluded that the covenant was reasonable. Chuck Wagon allows us to conclude as a matter of law that it was reasonable for General Medical Corporation to protect its customer contacts by prohibiting Kobs from soliciting customers formerly serviced by Kobs for eighteen months after the termination of his employment. I would not put the parties to the inconvenience and *439expense of trying an issue we may ultimately decide as a matter of law.