Non-Compete Breach of Contract: Both Sides Argued

The instruction that governs this assignment is to provide arguments for both parties, and it is a genuine constraint rather than a formality. A paper that decides who should win and then argues for that outcome has answered a different question, however well it argues. What is being tested is whether you can construct the strongest available case on each side of a dispute where both sides have real material to work with — which is the ordinary condition of contract litigation and the reason the subject is taught this way. Write the two cases separately and at comparable strength, and resist resolving the dispute until the very end, if at all. If you find one side much easier to write, that is a sign you have not yet found the other side's best argument. Drafting the weaker side first is a practical way to guard against that, since whichever case you write second will always benefit from the momentum of the first.

Get the framework right before the arguments, because non-compete disputes are decided within a well-defined test rather than on general fairness. Courts assessing a restrictive covenant typically ask whether it protects a legitimate business interest, whether its restrictions on duration, geography, and scope of activity are reasonable and no broader than needed to protect that interest, and whether enforcement would impose undue hardship on the employee or harm the public. Naming that structure and then organising both parties' arguments inside it is what turns the paper from an exchange of assertions into a legal analysis. The facts you were given — two years, one hundred miles, a resignation after one year, a new practice at seventy-five miles — map directly onto those elements. Working through them element by element also gives the paper a visible structure, which matters when a reader is checking whether both parties received equal treatment.

Build the hospital's case from the interests the covenant plausibly protects. The recognised categories include patient relationships and referral sources developed at the employer's expense, confidential business information such as pricing and strategic plans, and the investment made in recruiting, credentialing, and building a practice for a physician who then leaves. The hospital will argue that the restriction is modest in duration, that the geographic radius corresponds to the area from which it actually draws patients, and that Dr Delgado is operating well inside it. It will also argue that the covenant was bargained for as part of the compensation package, and that a professional who accepted its benefits should not escape its burdens. The strongest version of that argument is not moral but economic: the hospital will say it paid a premium precisely because the covenant was part of the bargain, and that removing it retroactively rewrites the price.

Build the defence with equal care, and note that it has several independent lines rather than one. Reasonableness can be attacked directly: one hundred miles is a very large radius for a paediatric practice, and the hospital would have to show it genuinely serves that area. The scope may be overbroad if it bars all competing practice rather than the specific activities that threaten the protected interest. There is a hardship argument, since a physician barred from practising within that radius may effectively have to move. And there is the public interest argument, which is unusually strong in medicine: restricting where a paediatrician may practise reduces access to care and severs continuity for existing patients, and several jurisdictions treat physician covenants with particular scepticism for exactly that reason. Note that this argument belongs to the patients rather than to Dr Delgado, which is what makes it survive the objection that she freely accepted the terms.

One thing this assignment rewards heavily is knowing that the ground has shifted, because a paper written from older material will look dated. Enforceability of non-compete agreements varies substantially between states, from routine enforcement subject to reasonableness, through statutory limits specific to physicians, to outright prohibition in a few jurisdictions. The federal position has also been contested recently. So the honest answer to who wins is that it depends on the governing law, and saying so — while noting that the brief does not specify a jurisdiction — is a strength rather than a hedge. Pick a jurisdiction, state that you are doing so, and argue within it. Naming it in your opening paragraph rather than at the end also prevents the paper from reading as though the ambiguity was discovered halfway through. Choosing a state with a physician-specific statute makes the analysis sharper, since the legislature has then already answered part of the reasonableness question for you.

Finally, on remedies and support. Note that what the hospital is likely to seek is an injunction rather than damages, since the harm is ongoing and hard to quantify, and that some courts will modify an overbroad covenant rather than voiding it entirely — the blue-pencil approach — which gives the parties a middle outcome your paper should acknowledge. Support your reasoning as the brief requires: cite statutes, cases, or a legal reference work rather than general commentary, and be careful that anything you cite is current, since this is an area where a source from five years ago may describe a rule that no longer applies. Check the date on every authority you cite, and prefer a statute or a decision to a summary of one, since summaries are where superseded rules survive longest.