Court Opinion

ID: 9864719
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 15:08:57.035398+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:25:06.671151
License: Public Domain

THE COURT.
The petition for rehearing is denied. It sufficiently appears from the record that the individual defendants and appellants who were all former employees of the plaintiff and respondent entered into a combination to do business under the fictitious name of Purity Ice Company, having for its purpose and effect the creation of a competing business to that of their former employer through the combined use of such confidential information and business secrets of their said employer as they had each obtained in the course of their former employment. While not impinging upon the right of an employee to make appropriate use of his knowledge and experience gained in one employment in advancing his interests in entering other employment, we are satisfied that such a combination as that shown to have existed among these several defendants, the direct object and effect of which is to injure or destroy the business of their former employer, comes clearly within the equitable principles relating to unfair competition in conformity with which the injunction here was, we think, properly issued.  The scope of such injunction was not brought into question upon this appeal until the presentation of the petition for rehearing and will not for that reason be given consideration thereof.
Seawell, J., dissented.