Can I prevent a piano teacher who works at my studio from taking my clients with him when he quits?
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Can I prevent a piano teacher who works at my studio from taking my clients with him when he quits?
Asked on May 8, 2015 under Employment Labor Law, Illinois
Answers:
SJZ, Member, New York Bar / FreeAdvice Contributing Attorney
Answered 9 years ago | Contributor
Yes and no.
He is not allowed to deliberately solicit clients of yours that he only knows due to his employment; doing so would be using proprietary information (your client list), which he was given access to only for his employment, to his personal advantage. However:
1) Even he can't solicit customers to go with him, *they* can follow him; the restriction on using proprietary information applies to him using your information to solicit customers, but does not bar customers from choosing to go with him. And yes--sometimes it can be very difficult to determine whether he sought out the customer, or the customer sought out him.
(In the future, you can protect yourself better from having employees sign an agreement when they start working for you that they will not work with your customers in any situation after they leave you.)
2) If the teacher brought the customer with him--that is, the customer followed the teacher to you--then it's his customer in a sense and he can ask them to stay with him.
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