Law Commons^™

The American Experience With Employee Noncompete Clauses: Constraints On Employees Flourish And Do Real Damage In The Land Of Economic Liberty, Kenneth G. Dau-Schmidt, Xiaohan Sun, Phillip J. Jones

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Agreements not to compete are generally an anathema to free market advocates. Independent profit maximization is one of the fundamental assumptions of the neoclassical economic model and necessary to its conclusion that markets yield results that are Paraeto efficient. Consistent with this theory, and practical experience, agreements among competitors, or potential competitors, to divide a market, or fix price or quantity are per se violations under our antitrust laws.

Despite this fact, even some ardent free market advocates have argued on behalf of the enforcement of covenants not to compete in the employment relationship. The traditional economic argument in favor …

Agency Law And The New Economy, Mark J. Loewenstein

Publications

This article considers the status of workers in the "new economy," defined as the sharing economy (e.g., Uber, Lyft) and the on-demand economy. The latter refers to the extensive and growing use of staffing companies by established businesses in many different industries to provide all or a portion of their workforce. Workers in both the sharing economy and the on-demand economy are, generally speaking, at a disadvantage in comparison to traditional employees. Uber drivers, for example, are typically considered independent contractors, not employees, and therefore are not covered under federal and state laws that protect or provide benefits to employees. …

People As Resources: Recruitment And Reciprocity In The Freedom-Promoting Approach To Property, Jedediah S. Purdy

Faculty Scholarship

Theorists usually explain and evaluate property regimes either through the lens of economics or by conceptions of personhood. This Article argues that the two approaches are intertwined in a way that is usually overlooked. Property law both facilitates the efficient use and allocation of scarce resources and recognizes and protects aspects of personhood. It must do both, because human beings are both resources for one another and the persons whose moral importance the legal system seeks to protect. This Article explores how property law has addressed this paradox in the past and how it might in the future.

Two bodies …

Where There's At-Will, There Are Many Ways: Redressing The Increasing Incoherence Of Employment At Will, Scott A. Moss

Publications

Employment at will, the doctrine holding that employees have no legal remedy for unfair terminations because they hold their jobs at the will of the employer, has become mired in incoherence. State courts praise the common law rule as "essential to free enterprise" and "central to the free market," but in recent years they increasingly have riddled the rule with exceptions, allowing employee claims for whistleblowing, fraud, etc. Yet states have neither rejected employment at will nor shown any consistency in recognizing exceptions. Strikingly, states cite the same rationales to adopt and reject opposite exceptions, as a case study of …

Judge-Made Insurance That Was Not On The Menu: Schmidt V. Smith And The Confluence Of Text, Expectation, And Public Policy In The Realm Of Employment Practices Liability, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

In Schmidt v. Smith, the New Jersey Supreme Court caught more than a few observers by surprise. New Jersey courts have generally issued opinions regarded as pro-claimant and pro-policyholders. But everyone's taste for recompense and coverage has limits. In Schmidt, the court exceeded those limits for many observers by holding that despite what it regarded as clear contract language in an exclusion, an insurer providing Employers’ Liability (“EL”) coverage along with Workers' Compensation (“WC”) insurance for the employer was required to provide coverage in a case of blatant sexual harassment bordering on criminal assault. In doing so, the Schmidt court, …

Proceedings Of The 1999 Annual Meeting, Association Of American Law Schools Section On Employment Discrimination Law: Is There A Disconnect Between Eeo Law And The Workplace?, Douglas D. Scherer, James C. Sharf, Richard T. Seymour, Maria O'Brien Hylton, Paulette Caldwell

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Workmen's Compensation Benefits Recoverable On The Existence Of A Quasi Contract, David Frisch

Law Faculty Publications

An analysis on a worker's compensation case decided by the Supreme Court of Florida.