Legal Question in Business Law in Texas

If you have received a citation, then you need to hire a lawyer and file an answer to the lawsuit, ASAP. You have some very short deadlines, and you need counsel. Your attorney will also need time to review the case with you and prepare the answer. Time is not on your side.

Dave

Please read my disclaimer:

http://leonlaw.com/askalawyer/disclaimer

You wrote: "i had a lawyer look at the contract, and basically as long as i didnt solicit the companies customers, that i was ok.... is this right?"

A restrictive agreement may stipulate that an employee, post-termination, is barred from "soliciting" the Company's customers. *If* this is what you had, often the term "soliciting" is construed narrowly, i.e. only to prohibit the former employee from making contact with the customers for purposes of a competing business.

So if Customer X found you were separated from the Company, and *it* independently contacted *you*, without your having formerly contacted it, then this would not qualify as a prohibited "solicitation."

This appears to be complicated in your case by your having sent around a communication to the former customers: While you may not have expressly asked for their business, it could be interpreted as an indirect or subtle way of doing that, or as a type of subterfuge. Obviously you were interested in their business. Was this the basis on which the court issued an injunction against you?

I agree with the first answer, given by David Leon, that if you have, in fact, been sued, you need to hook up with an attorney you feel you can trust. Time is not on your side and so you need to jump on this immediately. Its likely that they're just trying to scare you, but you still need to play it by the rules. Chances are some sort of accommodation can be worked out between you and your prior employer. But, for now, don't let them get a default judgment against you because you didn't properly reply (filing a pleading document with the court).