The employer’s second remedy is money damages. Money damages counts as any money that your employer lost because you broke your
employment agreement.
These are less likely to occur and sometimes difficult to prove. The bad news is that if your former employer wins, you could be on the hook to pay your employer back.
The good news is that the amount that your employer can take from you is only equal to the amount of money that your employer lost because you broke your employment agreement.
In this area of law, many employers have advocated for the measure of damages being the profits that you made by leaving the company early. This would punish the employee for leaving.
Under contract law, the goal is to put both parties back in the position they would have been in had no breach occurred.
In this case, let’s say you decide to break your non-compete. You leave Google to go to Apple. Apple promises you a hefty signing bonus, and you stand to make more money at Apple than you would have at Google.
You might consider making the jump in this case. The best-case scenario is that you leave, your employer does not pursue your non-compete, and you sign a deal with Apple with no non-compete agreement.
The next best outcome is that your signing bonus and salary exceeds your employer’s losses. Basically, in this case, if your employer did pursue you, you’d have more than enough money to pay your former employer back.
In this situation, everyone wins. The law doesn’t care because, essentially, no harm, no foul.
You may have guessed the worst situation. You go to your
next job, and it does not pay you enough to cover your employer’s lost profits. You are then sued. You lose and you have to pay your employer damages.
Now, practically speaking, employers may not actually go after you. Going to court costs money. If you’re not a very high-level employee, you may not be worth pursuing to your former employer. And the employer will have a hard time proving that you caused them to lose out on profit.
This is not to say that you should just break your non-compete agreement. There is still risk. And if you are considering breaking your contract, you should contact a lawyer.
Employer’s will do what’s necessary to protect their interests. You should do the same.