[2025] EWHC 2873 (KB)

The Defendant worked as a salesman for the Claimant in London between August 2017 and June 2025. He handed in his resignation notice in May 2025. The Claimant suspects that the Defendant intended to set up in competition and to solicit their customers and seeks to enforce various restrictive covenants in the Defendant’s contract of employment. At an interim relief hearing in July 2025 the Defendant gave undertakings not to solicit or deal with the Claimant’s existing “Restricted Customers” (more below on that term) and not to approach the Claimant’s staff, to poach them, all for a period of 12 months from the end of his notice. The issues between the parties arose mainly from the restrictive covenant preventing the Defendant from working in competition with the Claimant for 12 months. The terms, scope and enforceability of that covenant were in issue. At the end of the five day-hearing I decided to dismiss the claim, having heard the evidence and the submissions, declared that the Defendant had not breached the terms of his contract and decided that the restrictive covenant relating to non-competition was unenforceable. I announced that decision so that the Defendant could get back to work pending the handing down of the reasons for those decisions.