My question involves labor and employment law for the state of: Ohio and Virgina. (non-compete, confidentiality, plus a non-solicitation with the other company)

I was the sub on a federal contract (supposed to be the prime or a TEAM, but that is a separate issue.) Because the prime was violating our agreement/contracr, I was told by the customer that I should pull my people off of the contract and it would be re-awarded in a few weeks. (the prime did not have the ability to service this customer and the customer knew that my company has a strong competitive advantage in the specific skill set. in fact in less than 2 years we have gone 1 employee to 10 employees all but one in this specific skill set.) I found out after a couple of weeks that my employee(s) never left. In fact the day I told them that we needed to stop work - and would hopefully start back in less than a month, and offered to help them financially during the off-time - they immediately were hired by the prime (with whom my company had a non-solicitation agreement!). The govt manager informed me of this and stated "they stole YOUR competitive advantage", It seems to be to be so blatantly obvious that this violated the non-compete with the employee(s) and tortious interference with the other company. (the other company claimed to not know, but the employees testified that the other company knew and said "so what".)

Finally the non-compete is under the laws of the state of Ohio, very narrowly drawn - 1 year and ONLY restricting the employees from working for customer when I placed then (which means 1customer (on the oneproject) they can work anywhere else). the tortious interference case is for Virginia (where the other company is based.)


I am looking for cases when the employee of one contract company decides to cut his vendor out of the picture. (I have seen others do this, but always have been too ethical to screw anyone else in this manner. ) I hear of cases that deal with slightly different situations. One example stated the the violated set up shop 'almost literally across the street". . . well in this case they are doing the EXACT same job sitting at the same desk,just giving away to my competitor what I spent decades building.

Also rather than just using the term "trade secrets" I am looking for example cases where the term "competitive advantage" have been used as the basis.

I believe that the ohio cases Polyone v Papadopolous and LMI v Bourgeois seem on point. the LMI case is the most recent and on point. (the other side is cherry-picking phrases out of an older case - Brentlinger - which is not only older but not on point.)

Can anyone advise? (it appears that judges in other states have proclaimed that they don't like non-compete and they ignore the fact that the contract state that Ohio law applies.)

Thanks !