In June I left a company I worked at for 7 years. I was being forced to work as much as 80hrs weekly on salary. I have a wife, two kids, one with special needs. Before leaving and at the urging of certain people, I checked my personnel file to ensure I had nothing in the way of a non-compete. Everyone else I worked with signed one but I distinctly remembered the circumstances by which I came not to sign it.
Long story short, it’s been 2 months. We negotiated an “amicable” resolution and the employer was not willing to get specific and essentially wanted me to sign their new non-compete with generic blanket language. Their only revision would have allowed me to solicit employees and I would also have to give them a list of every customer that I would need to work with in order to work at my new employer. Which would be revealing the same type of information about my new employer to my old employer.
They’ve now put together a complaint stating that the document was taken from my personnel file. First they said I took it when I reviewed my file, the same day that I gave my notice. Now, they’ve stated that I had opportunity to steal it from my file while the company was being moved and the files weren’t secure.
As this is an ongoing legal case, I’ve omitted my name and the identity of both companies at this point.
My wife and I are trying to retain legal counsel and will need to leverage every asset we have in order to pull it through. The people I’m going against are millionares each and every one of them.