Burton Case Study

Case Study – Consideration and Public Policy
Vance Burton case is not unique in his concern about his employer serving him with a breach of the non-compete agreement and utilizing the arbitration process. Most employers are now requiring and/or mandating employees to execute all company documents electronically, to streamline their practices. “The Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act (E-sign), and the Uniform Electronic Transaction (UETA) mandates equality between paper and electronic contract(s). The basic legal rules that govern contracts offline, are the very same rules that govern online contracts” (Twomey & Jenning. 2017. p. 216). In the state of Maryland statue § 21-104, the Use of Electronic Records and Electronic Signature; Variation by Agreement has been enacted and

(3) Except for a separate and optional agreement the primary purpose of which is to authorize a transaction to be conducted by electronic means, a provision to conduct a transaction electronically may not be contained in a standard form contract unless that provision is conspicuously displayed and separately consented to.” Western State Technology College (WSTC) upon hiring Professor Vance Burton in 2010 provided a copy of the WSTC non-compete agreement via the employee handbook, which may not be considered a binding contract, if not stipulated in the handbook, with an additional disclaimer (Littler.com. 2012). Employers cannot use the provision of the handbook as a basis to sue the employee, since most companies use their handbook as a conduct guideline which is dotted with disclaimers and statements. In Woolley v. Hoffman-LaRoche, Inc. N.J. 284 (1985), the court held that the employee handbook could not be used as an enforced contractual provision. The non-compete agreement included specific language in such, that the employee can understand and use has a guideline to abide by. In 2012, WSTC