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21st Century Fox Sues Netflix Over Executive Poaching (latimes.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Los Angeles Times: 21st Century Fox on Friday filed a lawsuit against Netflix, accusing the streaming video giant of illegally recruiting two of its executives who were under contract. The suit, which was filed Friday in California Superior Court in Los Angeles, says Netflix engaged in a "brazen campaign to unlawfully target, recruit, and poach valuable Fox executives by illegally inducing them to break their employment contracts with Fox to work at Netflix." The lawsuit was sparked following the exits of two Fox executives: Marcos Waltenberg, who made the jump to Netflix earlier this year, previously worked as a marketing executive at Twentieth Century Fox Film; Tara Flynn, who made the move to Netflix just last week, had been the vice president of creative affairs at Fox 21 TV Studios. Fox alleges that Netflix pursued and hired the executives even though it knew they each had employment contracts that were still in effect, according to the complaint. The Century City-based studio is seeking an injunction to prevent Netflix from interfering with its employment contracts, as well as compensatory and punitive damages. A Netflix spokesperson said in a statement: "We intend to defend this lawsuit vigorously. We do not believe Fox's use of fixed term employment contracts in this manner are enforceable. We believe in employee mobility and will fight for the right to hire great colleagues no matter where they work."
The rats are leaving the sinking ship.
This suit will be thrown out before the ink dries. Employee mobility is very strongly enforced in California.
Two people have contracts with Fox that, presumably, say they can't work for someone else. Neflix, who has no contract with Fox, hires those people. Fox sues Netfix and not their former employees.
How the fuck is this not a SLAPP-like bullshit case that gets thrown out teh second a judge sees it? How can you sue someone for breaking a contract they aren't party too?
If I was them, I'd sue over them poaching *my* executives as well.
Everyone knows they're meant to be grilled or fried.
How are they suing fox? I can see if they sued their former employee for breach on contract and fox chose to defend them.
What laws are on the books that make poaching illegal?
I'd like to poach some Fox executives.
Companies make these kinds of suits to cost others money. The expectation is to enforce their contracts by getting them to fire the staff. Most people would just get fired. This is why 'unenforceable' contractors are enforceable. Most new employers will simply fire you. There was a wallstreet journal article about a financial company in Finance360 or something like that, making entry level people sign non-competes so i f they leave, they cant get another job in anything remotely related for a year. Some woman was unemployable. Its not enforceable legally, but its not worth it to other employers to defend you.
That allows the employees to terminate the contract if a "key person" (e.g. Roger Ailes) left the company?
I thought that "No Poach" agreements were already illegal and negatively affected wages and the job market.
And their contracts already included terms for if they were broken which are not illegal either so long as those terms are followed when broken.
So we have companies now trying to fight when it is exposed that they had no poaching agreements in place for their rank and file pretending that the agreements were legal when they weren't while at the same time trying to sue Netflix for not honoring the no poach agreements because they were already ruled illegal.
Did they forget all the crap that happened after Steve Jobs crap was found out after his death. Hell, if he were still alive he might have risked some serious shit for that since the no poach setup he had was estimated to surpress wages across the entire industry by a minimum of 10%.
Sue.
Fox fully believes in the ability to buy and keep people. If you steal their slaves you will be prosecuted!
the new guard is bringing in the old guard into the new system.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
From back when Microsoft hired pretty much the whole of Borlands programming tools staff ?
So...Slashdot is also a mundane contract law blog website now?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
They are just taking potshots at each other.
The Hatfields and the McCoys didn't actually have to *hit* each other, to feel good about *shooting* at each other. Like any feud, it kind of doesn't matter if the shots *hit*, only that there is continued shooting.