Court Opinion

ID: 9660163
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 22:06:50.525972+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:16.126363
License: Public Domain

CROW, Presiding Judge,
dissents.
I respectfully dissent.
The majority opinion holds West “did not prove it had a legitimate protectable interest to be served by preventing Bell from working at KSYN.”
It must be remembered that the trial court did not bar Bell from working at KSYN in perpetuity. The noncompete covenant West asked the trial court to enforce provided only that Bell would not compete with West within a 180-day period following termination of employment.
Bell left West’s employment September 1, 1995, and began employment at KSYN October 9, 1995. The preliminary injunction was issued November 22,1995. By then, 81 days of the noncompete period had passed. Bell had worked at KSYN for 43 of those 81 days in violation of the covenant.
The permanent injunction expired February 29, 1996. Thus, the modest relief granted by the trial court barred Bell from employment in the broadcast industry in the Joplin area for only 99 days. After that, she was free to work at KSYN or for any other broadcaster.
The majority opinion acknowledges that a reviewing court assumes the trial court believed the testimony consistent with its judgment; consequently, the reviewing court accepts as true the evidence and inferences from it favorable to the judgment and disregards contrary evidence.
Evidence favorable to the judgment included testimony by Paul Swint, general manager of West’s stations in Joplin, that Bell’s voice is “very recognizable” and her fans “can go from one station to the other.”
Barry Wendt, a disc jockey at KXDG at the time of Bell’s departure, testified that after she left he “happened to run into her downtown at a restaurant.” Wendt recounted, “She mentioned that she had some news probably wouldn’t make me too happy, and it didn’t, but that she was going to work for ... *940Mr. Dunaway.”1 Wendt continued, “I asked about the noncompete at the time, and she said that Chuck will take care of it, or Chuck said he will take care of it.”
Describing his reaction to Bell’s disclosure, Wendt said: “I was unhappy, because she’s a valuable employee, and I knew that she was going to hurt us, because she had good ratings on our station, and I didn’t want her taking that following over to his station .... as soon as she hit the air — she’s very talented, and I knew that that would hurt us.”
In Continental Research Corp. v. Scholz, 595 S.W.2d 396, 401 (Mo.App. E.D.1980), the court said:
“[I]n the sales industry the goodwill of a customer frequently attaches to the employer’s sales representative personally; the employer’s product becomes associated in the customer’s mind with that representative. The sales employee is thus frequently in a position to exert a special influence over the customer and entice that customer’s business away from the employer. An employer may properly protect itself against such an eventuality for a reasonable period of time.”
Although that passage deals with a sales representative, the analysis is apropos here. Because of the popularity Bell developed with listeners while broadcasting at KXDG, she was in a position to entice listeners away from KXDG to KSYN when she began broadcasting there. As pointed out by disc jockey Wendt: “I do the midday show, and [Bell] does the morning show over there [at KSYN], So usually your morning is your lead into your midday show, so if people go over there and listen to her in the mornings, they might stay there middays.”
The majority opinion recognizes that if a radio station’s listeners increase, its advertising rates rise; if its listeners decrease, its advertising rates fall. Consequently, even though Bell had no personal contact with West’s advertisers, it is obvious she could adversely affect West’s advertising revenue by diverting listeners from KXDG to KSYN when she began broadcasting there.
The majority opinion agrees that the analysis in Continental, supra, would be persuasive if Bell had used or attempted to use the Hurricane Hannah radio personality to exert special influence over Joplin area radio listeners and, in that fashion, adversely affected West’s advertising revenue by diverting listeners from KXDG to KSYN. However, the majority opinion says Bell did nothing at KSYN to capitalize on the image of the radio personality developed for her at KXDG.
The majority’s analysis ignores evidence favorable to the judgment. Charles Duna-way2 testified there are approximately 224 radio markets larger than the Joplin market. Given the relatively small size of the Joplin market, it is readily inferable that although Bell began broadcasting at KSYN as Robin Kane, the audience she developed at KXDG would recognize her on KSYN as Hurricane Hannah, to whom they had listened a few weeks earlier on KXDG.
There is evidentiary support for that inference. KXDG’s general manager, Swint, testified that the first day Bell was on the air at KSYN, three or four people reported to him that “Hannah’s working on KSYN.” Swint added, “I heard her myself.”
West’s evidence showed noncompete covenants are common in the broadcasting industry. The Georgia and Florida cases discussed in the majority opinion demonstrate that is so. The noncompete covenant Bell signed when West hired her is similar to the covenants in those cases as to geographical area and duration.
The majority opinion relies on factual differences between the instant case and the Georgia and Florida cases as justification for allowing Bell to violate the noncompete covenant. To me, those differences are only in degree, not substance.
*941While Bell may not have attained the celebrity status of the announcers in the Georgia and Florida cases, she was unquestionably able to attract a sizeable audience, as demonstrated by the Arbitron ratings. The evidence, viewed favorably to the judgment, amply demonstrates West had a financial interest in keeping those listeners tuned to KXDG instead of following Bell to a competing station upon her departure.
Enforcing the noncompete covenant would have allowed West a brief period to introduce a new announcer in an effort to hold the audience developed by Bell at KXDG. If West could not do so by March 1, 1996, the day Bell could have properly started announcing at KSYN, West would have had to suffer the financial consequences.
It ignores reality — and the evidence favorable to the judgment — to hold West had no “legitimate protectable interest” in the audience Bell attracted to KXDG. I therefore find no merit in Bell’s first point.
Her second (and final) point reads:
“The trial court erred in ... enjoining ... Bell from engaging in any employment in the broadcast industry prior to February 29, 1996, within a 65 air-mile radius from ... West Group’s tower location in Joplin, Missouri because it erroneously declared or applied the law relating to enforcement of restrictive covenants in that the trial court was acting as a court of equity and was required to balance the needs of the paties [sic] as well as the public and an application of that balancing test to the undisputed facts of this case clearly establishes as a matter of law that ... Bell’s need to earn a living and the public’s need to secure her presence in the labor pool outweighed any need of West ... to protect any legitimate business interest.”
The point is based on Grebing, 613 S.W.2d 872, cited in the majority opinion. Grebing holds that covenants by employees not to compete with their employers after termination of employment are enforceable only if the restraint imposed by the covenant on the employee is reasonable. Id. at 874[1]. According to Grebing, the determination of reasonableness depends on the competing needs of the parties and the needs of the public. Id. at [2]. The majority opinion quotes a segment of Grebing, id. at [3], identifying those needs.
The first need listed in Grebing is the employer’s need to protect legitimate business interests. In addressing Bell’s first point, I concluded West had a legitimate business interest in listeners Bell attracted to KXDG.
Bell argues that West should have protected any such interest by paying her more money. Bell argues, “Thus point one of the balancing test is resolved strongly against [West].”
On that issue, the evidence shows West hired Bell at $5.00 per hour. A month or two after she took over the seven-to-midnight show, West raised her to $5.50 per hour. After the Arbitron ratings in August, 1995, Bell asked for a raise and was offered $6.00 per hour. About a week later, she resigned. Asked why, Bell (a university student) testified she “wasn’t getting enough money for it to conflict with school.”
Unquestionably, Bell’s wages were relatively modest. However, the $6.00 per hour West offered in August, 1995, was twenty percent more than the salary at which she started just seven months earlier. Furthermore, Bell’s desire to earn more money to compensate for the conflict between her employment and her studies does not extinguish West’s right to protect its interest in listeners Bell attracted to KXDG. I therefore find no merit in Bell’s argument that the first element of the Grebing test is resolved strongly against West.
The second need listed in Grebing is the employee’s need to earn a living. Bell asserts this factor “is also balanced very heavily in [her] favor.”
On that issue, the record reveals Bell obtained employment as a waitress after leav*942ing KXDG. Although there is no evidence about what she earned at that job, it is inferable that her wages and hours were more satisfactory to her than her wages and hours at KXDG. Bell held the waitress job until October 9, 1995, when she was hired at KSYN.
As noted earlier, the effect of the injunc-tive relief granted by the trial court was to bar Bell from employment in the broadcast industry for only 99 days, and only within a “65 airmile radius” of West’s tower in Joplin. While exclusion from the broadcast industry for 99 days in the Joplin area undeniably hindered Bell’s ability to earn income, it did not prevent her from doing so. She was unquestionably employable as a waitress, and that occupation was evidently more attractive to her than the job she left at KXDG.
Furthermore, on March 1, 1996, she was free to return to the broadcast industry in Joplin. Because of her high Arbitron rating at KXDG, her value as an announcer in the Joplin area was arguably greater when the injunction expired than it was thirteen months earlier when West hired her.3 Consequently, I reject Bell’s argument that the second factor in the Grebing test is heavily balanced in her favor.
The final need listed in Grebing is the public’s need to secure the employee’s presence in the labor pool. Other than arguing that her high Arbitron rating indicates the public enjoyed her performance, Bell makes no attempt to show that the third factor favors her.
In my judgment, the trial court did not improperly balance the equities in enforcing the noncompete covenant. As we have seen, Bell knew the noncompete covenant barred her from broadcasting at KSYN for 180 days after leaving KXDG. With praiseworthy candor, she testified:
“Q. Now, you have talked with your new boss [at KSYN] about this covenant, is that right, before you went to work?
[[Image here]]
A. Yes.
Q. Yeah. He told you, don’t worry about it, his lawyers will take care of it? Isn’t that what he said?
A. Yeah. He said he didn’t believe it was enforceable, and so the lawyer, the legal system would take care of it.”
As it turned out, what the boss prophesied came true in this court.
I am firmly convinced the trial court neither erroneously declared nor erroneously applied the law in any respect alleged in Bell’s second point. Accordingly, I would affirm the judgment.

. Charles R. Dunaway is part owner of Mack, which operates KSYN.

. Footnote 1, supra.

. At the first hearing (November 16, 1995), Bell testified her salary at KSYN was $1,200 per month,