Becker v. Bailey’s Empirical Analysis
1973
Citation profile
14 district · 40 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 58 later decisions — most recently March 2019 · most notably Maryland Metals, Inc. v. Metzner (1978), 61 Cal. App. 4th 881 - Application Group, Inc. v. Hunter Group, Inc. (1998)
14 district · 40 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on Western Maryland Dairy, Inc. v. Chenowith · Tawney v. Mutual System of Maryland, Inc. · Ruhl v. F. A. Bartlett Tree Expert Co. · Silver v. Goldberger · Tolman Laundry, Inc. v. Walker
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 58 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“whether the person sought to be enjoined is an unskilled worker whose services are not unique; whether the covenant is necessary to prevent the solicitation of customers or the use of trade secrets, assigned routes, or private customer lists; whether there is any exploitation of personal contacts between the employee and customer; and, whether enforcement of the clause would impose an undue hardship on the employee or disregard the interests of the public.”
9 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[A]n employer has a legitimate interest and so can enforce ‘restrictive covenants’ only against those 'employees who provide unique services, or to prevent the future misuse of trade secrets, routes, or lists of clients, or solicitation of customers.’”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““There is a line of cases which holds that restraint is justified if a part of the compensated services of the former employee consisted in the creation of the good will of customers and clients which is likely to follow the person of the former employee. And there is another line of cases which holds that restraint is not justified if the harm caused by service to another consists merely in the fact that the former employee becomes a more efficient competitor just as the former employer did through having a competent and efficient employee. See 6A Corbin, Contracts, § 1394.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.