Part­ner, Nick Dale and Senior Asso­ciate, Sean Green­wood, recent­ly led the suc­cess­ful defence of a group of for­mer employ­ees of a major real estate fran­chise who left to join a competitor

Their for­mer employ­er sought inter­locu­to­ry injunc­tions restrain­ing our clients from work­ing in their new jobs. The deci­sion is high­ly sig­nif­i­cant because it inter­prets aspects of indus­try stan­dard employ­ment con­tracts for real estate agents, and rein­forces an ear­li­er deci­sion from 2020 involv­ing the same con­trac­tu­al claus­es. The deci­sion also reit­er­ates that it may be more dif­fi­cult to enforce non-com­pete claus­es where employ­ees are ter­mi­nat­ed for rea­sons beyond their own con­trol, and that restraints must be rea­son­able if they are to be enforced.

The case involved com­plex issues about non-solic­i­ta­tion of the for­mer employ­er’s clients and con­fi­den­tial infor­ma­tion, as well as employ­ment law issues sur­round­ing redun­dan­cy. Our clients had a con­vinc­ing win, with the inter­locu­to­ry appli­ca­tions against them being dis­missed with costs at the first avail­able opportunity. 

A link to the case is here

Nick and Sean instruct­ed Bernard Lloyd of Coun­sel, thank him for all of his skill­ful work and acknowl­edge the invalu­able con­tri­bu­tions of Esther Koo — Senior Asso­ciate , Daniel Miller — Asso­ciate, Suzi Sto­janovs­ki — Senior Asso­ciate and Cather­ine Aird — Legal Sec­re­tary to the outcome.

If you would like to repub­lish this arti­cle, it is gen­er­al­ly approved, but pri­or to doing so please con­tact the Mar­ket­ing team at marketing@​swaab.​com.​au. This arti­cle is not legal advice and the views and com­ments are of a gen­er­al nature only. This arti­cle is not to be relied upon in sub­sti­tu­tion for detailed legal advice.

Publications

The risk of builder insol­ven­cy mid way through a con­struc­tion project is real (and will prob­a­bly be expensive)

Intro­duc­tionThis arti­cle pro­vides guid­ance to those under­tak­ing con­struc­tion works and iden­ti­fies a num­ber of con­tract pro­vi­sions which, if includ­ed in the…

Cross-Com­pa­ny Secu­ri­ty and Liq­uida­tor Chal­lenges: Full Fed­er­al Court Restores Cer­tain­ty in CEG Direct Secu­ri­ties v Coop­er [2025] FCAFC 47

A sig­nif­i­cant deci­sion from the Full Fed­er­al Court has clar­i­fied the lim­its of liq­uida­tors’ pow­ers to unwind cross-com­pa­ny secu­ri­ty grant­ed…

Copy­right and Gen­er­a­tive AI: what Aus­tralia can learn from the Meta and Anthrop­ic Rulings

In 2025, two U.S. court deci­sions, Kadrey v. Meta and Bartz v. Anthrop­ic, have pro­vid­ed the first real judi­cial answers…

In the News

Michael Byrnes is quot­ed in the arti­cle, The reac­tion to Char­lie Kirk’s assas­si­na­tion and its impli­ca­tions for employ­ment law”, pub­lished in Lawyers Week­ly on 26 Sep­tem­ber 2025

Michael Byrnes is quot­ed in the arti­cle, ​“The reac­tion to Char­lie Kirk’s assas­si­na­tion and its impli­ca­tions for employ­ment law”, pub­lished…

Sarah Heuv­el pro­vides insight into get­ting Rent Roll Trans­ac­tions Com­pli­ance Compliant

Sarah Heuv­el in an inter­view with Matthew Cial­lel­la of MC Broking & Advi­so­ry, dis­cuss rent roll trans­ac­tions and the three key…

Michael Byrnes appeared on Mon­ey News with Evan Lucas on 2GB on 8 Sep­tem­ber 2025 to dis­cuss the recent Fed­er­al Court deci­sion relat­ing to salary arrange­ments, set-off claus­es and award compliance

Michael Byrnes appeared on Mon­ey News with Evan Lucas on 2GB on 8 Sep­tem­ber 2025 to dis­cuss the recent Fed­er­al Court…

Sign up for our Newsletter

*Mandatory information