Esso V Harpes Garage Case Summary

We can see one of the terms of this contract was for the “duration of the contract and for ten years after termination, Pat could not sign up to feature in an audio-visual production shot anywhere in the world without prior approval of Mingers Ltd” . I Pat was to undertake work for Beautiful People in Australia whilst he was under contract to Minger Ltd without their approval he would be in breach of the contract terms. “When any party to a contract, whether oral or written, fails to perform any of the contract’s terms, they may be found in breach of contract” . This would put Pat that the risk of being sued by Minger Ltd. Although, if Pat was to take up work in Australia with Beautiful People after the termination of his contract with Minger …show more content…
If the agreement was for a closer geographic area to where he was currently working with Minger Ltd then they may be able to restrict what work he could do if it could be proven damaging to their business. In Esso v Harpes Garage [1967] case “an exclusive dealership contract was deemed to be unreasonable as it lasted for 21yrs, although 5yrs was found to be ok in” Continental Oil v Moynihan [1973] . In the case of Pat, one could argue that the duration of restraint of trade may have been too long for to be considered as reasonable and a lesser period of time could be imposed on the termination restrictions. After gathering all of the above information in this case it looks that could be at risk of been sued by Minger Ltd. As Pat is not looking to start up a business in direct competition with Minger Ltd, but instead going to work for a competitor in a different country. It would be reasonable to argue that the world as a whole and a term of 10yrs would be considered as too long of a term and the scope too vast for a post-termination restrictive covenant. This could be seen as an unreasonable restraint of