Employees ordered to pay $4 million

Both employers and employees breach employment contracts, but normally action is only taken against an employer. Let's face it, if for example an employee resigns with only two week's notice instead of the required four – it is not generally worth your time to spend money enforcing the contract.

But Andrew Scott-Howman blogs at Workforce on a recent NZ case where it was:

It's one of the most difficult areas of employment law : what to do where an employee has acted in breach of a restraint, or an obligation of confidentiality. But a recent decision of the Employment gives heart to employers – where you can establish breach, some serious consequences may follow for employees.

The case is Rooney Earthmoving v McTague, Whiting and Bartlett (unreported, Employment Court Christchurch, 23 April 2012).  It concerned three , each of whom had been employed by the plaintiff before establishing a competing company ( Contracting).  A previous decision had established that the men had variously acted in breach of a number of contractual obligations owed to the former employer, including enticing away staff, securing customers and using the employer's confidential information. …

First, the contractual measure of loss will often do just fine. In Plain , these employees were liable to put the employer in the same position it would have been in if the various contractual breaches had not occurred. In this case, that meant a complicated assessment to work out exactly what the employees had taken away from their old employer as a result of their breaches.

Secondly, some limitation had to be applied to the damages assessment (ie at some point, if the employees hadn't acted in breach they would have become legitimate competitors). This involved the application of the doctrine of remoteness – an enormously complicated and contentious area of law in itself.

Finally, the quantum of loss assessed here was, on any view, massive : $4,290,000 – and, of course, because the is owed jointly and severally the employer can go after one, two, or all of the ex-employees for the whole amount.

As you can probably tell, this case is an important one for who may be called upon to advise in cases involving breaches of restraints and confidentiality.

But it is more than that. It is a decision that illustrates that the Court will not hold back in ordering massive damages – where a case justifies that.  And that sort of order will not be a “finger to the wind” type of award, but an astute objective assessment of actual contractual loss.

A $4 million award must be one of the largest in NZ – and especially for an award against employees, not an employer.

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