My question involves employment and labor law for the state of: Maryland
I recently left my former employer of 10+ years to work in a different section of the same industry. I wasn't happy with the direction of the company and wanted to get out of a management position and back to a hands on technical position.
To note, I signed a non-compete agreement with my former employer 6 years ago when I was holding a lower level position with the company and prior to the company being purchased. Had not signed a new one before I left.
At the new company, after accepting the job, I learned I would be working with two former co-workers. This was fine, until last week....
A client from our former employer contacted one of my co-workers unhappy with our former employer and their product. The client was looking to see if our new employer could provide an alternative solution. Since we are unable to do so as we are in a different section of the industry, we explained that we could offer something to work in conjunction with our former employer's product, but could not and would not offer a replacement of our former employers product. This in turn would also provide additional revenue to our former employer as the client would need to purchase something from them as well to get everything to work together.
The sticky part is I sent an email to a sales rep explaining the situation and he in turn accidentally replied to that email by sending it to my email address at my former employer. Now the former employer has the out of context email chain and thinks we are trying steal clients.
It's been a few days and no contact from the former employer has been made, only from employees of the former employer alerting us to the rumors they heard.
I'm not sure what to expect or how to proceed.

