Maryland Employment Contracts Legal Questions

Kelso, thank you for your question.  I am a Fourth Circuit appeals attorney in Maryland, and I also deal with wrongful termination, so I will try to help.  I looked up your case in the US District Court, via publicly available online records.  It appears that you filed two cases in that Court.  Both were dismissed and consolidated into one appeal in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.  The appellate court affirmed the lower court in an unpublished per curiam opinion.  The appellate court's judgment was entered on December 22, 2014.  As a result, any petition for a writ of certiorari in the US Supreme Court must be filed within 90 days of that date (which would be March 22, 2015, which is a Sunday, so the actual deadline to file the petition is March 23, 2015). You may have a good-faith basis to file the petition, and my firm can help.  The lower court mentioned that you "implied" that the Board never issued a decision, but did not squarely allege this fact in your complaint.  The lower court was required to construe the complaint liberally, as it admitted, since you were proceeding pro se.  The appellate court did not address this matter in its unpublished per curiam opinion.  Since the lower court was expressly able to notice the implication, perhaps it should have construed the complaint accordingly.  So, if the failure of the Board to have issued a decision impacted the date that the statute of limitations began to run, then you may have grounds to file the cert petition. A cert petition requires a lot of work by an attorney.  It is not a simple matter, and should not be attempted by a non-lawyer, even if the non-lawyer is as driven, intelligent and capable as you clearly are.  It is not a reflection on you, but just the reality of the complexity of appellate litigation. Feel free to contact my firm.  I can help.... Read More

Assuming that you have the approval of the business's owners (e.g. shareholders; under some circumstances you might owe a duty to the business's creditors as well) to make this charitable donation, I see no reason why not.  Many law firms hire associates and assign them to work, at least part of the time, on pro bono matters.... Read More

What does it provide about expiration?  If it is part of an employment agreement which expired, it probably is not still applicable, although if you continued to work under the same terms and conditions even after the employment agreement expired, it could be implied that all terms and conditions, including the non-compete, continued to apply. If the contract did not have a specific term, however, it would not expire.  Thus, something along the lines of "Employee agrees that he will not compete with the Company for a period of two years after the termination of his employment" would not expire; it would kick in whenever you left your employment. Even if the provision has not expired, however, that doesn't mean that it is enforceable.  Courts generally look upon non-compete agreements with some skepticism, and carefully scrutinize them, enforcing them only if they are reasonably limiited and necessary to protect the employer's legitimate interests (the exact analysis differs from state to state, but that is the general gist, except in California where non-competes are unenforceable except under very limited circumstances.)  This analysis can depend on many factors, including the nature of the employee's job, the industry involved, how broad the non-compete is geographically and temporally, whether the employer spent time and money training the employee, whether the employee received additional compensation (beyond just getting or keeping his/her job) for the non-compete, etc. etc.... Read More

You say you accepted a job offer, which means you entered into a contract.  What does the contract provide?  While it cannot force you to remain employed by company A, it can restrict your rights to be employed by a competitor.  Even if the contract does not restrict your right to leave company A's employ, I believe that company A would still be able to recover the money it spent training you, because it spent that money in reliance on your commitment to join its employ, although I don't know if company A will want the hassle and expense of suing you over $1,500.... Read More

Non-compete provisions in employment agreements are sometimes enforceable, but not always.  It depends on a lot of factors, including how broad the restriction is (i.e. does it prevent the former employer from any competition or just from soliciting his former employer's customers, or just from doing business with customers he serviced during his last year working for his former employer, etc.), how long the restriction lasts, how geographically broad the restriction is, whether the employee has specialized skils or is just doing a job which many people can do, whether the employee is using trade secrets or confidential information from his old employer in his new job, whether the employee was paid anything extra for not competing, etc.  Also, in some cases (generally where a non-compete clause is deemed just a little overbroad but not really extreme), a Court will "blue pencil" an otherwise unenforceable non-compete provision by narrowing it so it is acceptable, e.g. changing a clause which prohibits competition within ten miles for three years to one which prohibits competition within 2 miles for 1 year.... Read More

Unless you have a contract limiting the grounds for which you can be fired, or specifying that you will be employed for a certain period of time, you can be fired for any reason not prohibited by statute (e.g. race, religion, gender, etc.)  As for whether your employer can properly own competing franchises, it may be a breach of your employer's agreement with shell and/or exxon, but that is between your employer and the franchisor. ... Read More

From what you've written, it does not appear that the promise from your manager is an enforceable agreement.  First, most states have what is known as a Statute of Frauds which requires some types of contracts to be in writing, and most of these statutes require contracts which cannot be performed within a year (unless one of the parties dies) to be in writing.  You claim that your manager promised not to fire you forever as long as you met the requirements on the list, a contract which would probably fall within the Statute of Frauds in most jurisdictions, and therefore would have to be in writing to be valid.  Also, you claim you signed another document, which did not contain the promise not to fire you, at the same time your manager made the promise not to fire you.  In most jurisdictions, the parole evidence rule would bar you from presenting any evidence of an oral agreement which contradicts the terms of a written agreement which purports to be the parties' full agreement.  I can't tell for sure without more details about the "list" you signed, but it seems as if that may have been a written agreement which would be contradicted by your claim of an oral agreement.  There are exceptions to both the statute of frauds and the parole evidence rule, but I can't tell from what you've written if any of them could apply to your situation.... Read More

Without knowing the specifics of your contract or your relationship to the company in question, as a general matter, you always have recourse to get money owed to you under a valid contractual arrangement. There can be other concerns, such as whether the defendant has the money to pay the judgment so that you can collect.  That being said, if you have a valid contract and you did the work, then the company does owe the money to you and you have legal recourse to get a judgment against them.... Read More