Ending a more than 15-year-long legal battle, the Fifth Circuit on May 24, 2019, unanimously affirmed the dismissal of a proposed class action against subsidiaries of UBS AG, alleging violations of U.S. securities laws for their role as a broker of Enron’s employee stock option plan and for failure to disclose material information about Enron’s “financial manipulations.” Lampkin et al. v. UBS PaineWebber Inc. et al., No. 17-20608 (5th Cir. May 24, 2019).
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Are No-Poach Agreements Becoming Extinct?
Agreements between companies who compete for employees have always been subject to antitrust scrutiny. But recently, “no-poach” agreements—i.e. agreements to not recruit or hire another party’s employees—have become the subject of a recent flurry of government enforcement actions and private class actions.
In this article, we discuss the types of no-poach covenants that are permissible, and the possible civil and criminal risks a company faces by entering into an impermissible no-poach agreement. We also discuss various alternatives to no-poach agreements that an employer can use to protect its workforce from competitor poaching.
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California Supreme Court Announces a Win for Payroll Outsourcing Industry
Last week, the California State Supreme Court struck a decisive victory in favor of payroll companies, issuing a unanimous opinion that an employee is not a third-party beneficiary of the contract between her employer and its payroll service provider. The court held that an employee-plaintiff has no standing to sue her employer’s payroll company for an alleged failure to pay wages under California’s employee-friendly labor laws.
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