Zoll Medical Corp. sued a former sales manager from Tennessee for allegedly violating the terms of a non-competition agreement when she took a job with Medtronic Inc.‘s Physio-Control subsidiary.
Patti Polk of Nashville worked for Zoll from July 1999 until she quit in October 2005, according to a complaint originally filed in Middlesex County Superior Court. Zoll re-hired Polk a year later as a hospital territory manager for all of Tennessee except Memphis.
Her contract with the Chelmsford resuscitation device maker allegedly contained a non-competition agreement stipulating that, should Polk leave Zoll, she would not “undertake any employment or activity that is competitive with Zoll’s services” for 18 months and “for a period of two years following her termination” not “solicit business from any current or known prospective customer of Zoll,” according to the complaint.
Polk allegedly ran afoul of those terms when, in March, she resigned to take a job at Physio-Control, one of Zoll’s direct competitors.
Zoll’s complaint seeks unspecified damages and an injunction preventing Polk from taking any job — including her current position with the Medtronic subsidiary — until the time limits in the non-competition agreement lapse.
Polk’s lawyer, John McLafferty, declined to comment on the case, which was moved from Middlesex Superior Court to the U.S. District Court for Massachusetts.