How legal is this contract restriction clause?

[northernladuk]

Only a court can decide whether it's legally binding.

Lawyers will argue that what their client says is enforceable and threaten to take it all the way to court but only a judge can state whether it actually is.

I only know of one business person who actually took a restrictive clause all the way to court and it stuck. This is because the clause was very well drafted and specific i.e. you cannot set up a similar type business within 10 miles of this business in the town of x for 12 months and you cannot approach existing clients for the same time period.

Normally a clause of 3 to 6 months is enough to stop people stealing clients etc but in this case due to both people being known in the community, 12 months was thought to be fairer.

Other people have just told the respective party to sod off, or the party implementing the clause realises it isn't reasonable and backs down. Some one man band agents write bad clauses like this and if you tell them that you are going to have a lawyer look at it they back down as they know even if you agree to the clause it cannot be enforced.

In the various UK courts (sorry no nothing about Irish law) anything worded like that would have a pen taken to it and any unreasonable parts would be struck out. This means what is left wouldn't make sense and so the entire clause couldn't be enforced.

Agreed but the point I was making is nothing will stick until a legal process has started, used the lawyer as an example of the first step. Up to that point its just arguing.

[paddytheirishman]

Well, as none of the affected contractors would sign their contract with the restriction clause included, the agent agreed to remove it from our contracts. I signed the updated contract and sent it back this morning. This evening I was told the project I'm working on has been canned. Oh well...