rejecting the defendant’s argument that physician covenants not to compete should be declared void as against public policy, and noting that the Tennessee legislature, in the wake of Murfreesboro Medical Clinic, had enacted § 63-1-148 to “permit[] physician noncompetition agreements if they are in writing, last two years or less, and keep within certain geographical limitations”
How later courts described this case
- rejecting the defendant’s argument that physician covenants not to compete should be declared void as against public policy, and noting that the Tennessee legislature, in the wake of Murfreesboro Medical Clinic, had enacted § 63-1-148 to “permit[] physician noncompetition agreements if they are in writing, last two years or less, and keep within certain geographical limitations”
- noting Indiana has “long held that noncompetition covenants in employment contracts are in restraint of trade and disfavored by the law”
- holding that the geographic restriction was unreasonable under the facts of the case
- noting that it would be “virtually impossible to quantify the profits diverted by Krueger’s move” to a different podiatry practice
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
SHEPARD, Chief Justice,
dissenting.
Krueger practiced podiatry with Central Indiana in both the far northern part of Marion County and in southern Hamilton County under a contract providing that he would not compete against them in either county for two years after the business relationship ended.
Thereafter, Krueger left Central and set up shop in Hamilton County just ten minutes from his former main site of practice on 86th Street in Marion County.
The competitive reality is that these two areas function as one for commercial purposes. That a county line divides these two locations means very little to most customers or purveyors of service, and I wouldn’t regard it as grounds for a court voiding a contract by which two relatively sophisticated parties ordered their commercial relationship.
DICKSON, J., joins.