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83 N.J. Eq. 295

Marvel v. Jonah

Supreme Court of New Jersey

Decided June 15, 1914

Supreme Court of New Jersey · decided 1914-06-15

<p>1. Upon the dissolution of a copartnership agreement between the complainant and defendant, and another, who were physicians practicing their profession in the city of Atlantic City, because of continued violations by the defendant of certain provisions contained in the copartnership agreement, the complainant is entitled to the enforcement against the defendant of a restrictive covenant, contained in that agreement, by the terms of which the defendant hound himself, in case the partnership was terminated because of violations of the contract by him, to refrain from practicing his profession in said city for a period of three years thereafter.</p> <p>2. The damages arising from the breach of such a covenant would be continuing, accruing from day to day, and it would be impossible to ascertain the money loss sustained by the complainant therefrom with anything approaching accuracy. A suit at law therefor would afford no adequate remedy, and when this is the case the court of chancery should enforce the covenant by granting an injunction to prevent the breach of it.</p>

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1914-06-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 15 later decisions — most recently August 1978

13 state decisions

501914192019301940195019601970decided

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.

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Garrison, J.

¶1(dissenting). •

¶21 agree that Dr. Maiwel was entitled to the measure of protection stated in the majority opinion, viz., that Dr. Jonah often having been brought into association with Dr. Marvel’s patients should not set up an independent practice in Atlantic City and take with him such patients, or any of them. I very fully agree that a covenant to this effect would be one that a court of conscience ought to enforce. The present covenant, however, goes away beyond such protection and penalizes Dr. Jonah by prohibiting him from practicing not only among such patients of Dr. Marvel’s but also among the hundreds of thousands of persons who annually visit Atlantic City without ever having heard of Dr. Marvel.

¶3Such a covenant, while good in law, is, owing to its highly penal character, one to tire enforcement of which equity refuses *300to lead its aid, leaving the parties to the courts of law where the complainant can obtain redress that is exactly proportioned to the injury he has suffered.

¶4This was the view of Vice-Chancellor Learning, in whose conclusions I concur and vote to affirm the decree advised by him, I am requested by Mr. Justice Bergen and by Judge White to saj' that they concur in the foregoing views.

¶5For affirmance — Garrison, Bergen, White — 3.

¶6For reversal — The Chief-Justice, Parker, Minturn, Kal-

¶7ISOtí, BOGERT, VREBENBURGr-T, H.EPPENHKIMER — 1.

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