Eric Gibbs
A founding partner at the firm, Eric has negotiated groundbreaking settlements that favorably shaped laws and resulted in business practice reforms.
Our attorneys are investigating allegations that Planet Fitness adopted a no-poach policy that prohibited corporate and franchise-owned locations from hiring workers away from each other. In practice, this would mean that anyone who worked at one Planet Fitness could not be hired at another Planet Fitness, unless they happened to have the same owner.
Federal courts have started to indicate that these no-poach provisions may be illegal under federal antitrust law.
Washington Attorney General Agrees Not to Sue Planet Fitness if It Stops Enforcing Its No-Poach Policies
On October 15, 2018, the Washington Attorney General announced that he had reached an agreement with Planet Fitness that the company would stop enforcing its no-hire and no-poach policies, and would remove its no-hire and non-solicitation clauses from its franchise agreement.
Franchises are independently-owned Planet Fitness locations that license the Planet Fitness name, but aren’t owned by Planet Fitness. The company required franchise-owners for the past five years to sign a no-poach clause promising that they wouldn’t hire workers from another Planet Fitness location, unless they also owned that location, according to the Washington Attorney General.
The attorney general said that Planet Fitness’s no-hire clause read as follows:
“You may not recruit or hire any person who is an employee of ours or of any PLANET FITNESS business operated by us, our Affiliates or another franchisee of ours without obtaining the employer’s consent, which consent may be withheld for any reason.”
Our Antitrust Lawyers
Dylan Hughes
Dylan concentrates his practice on investigating and prosecuting fraud matters on behalf of whistleblowers, consumers, and employees.
Michael Schrag
Michael Schrag has nearly 20 years of experience representing individual and small business plaintiffs in a broad range of complex class actions against large corporations.
Linda Lam
Linda focuses her practice on representing consumers, small businesses, and employees in complex litigation.
Steve Lopez
Steve represents consumers, employees, and whistleblowers harmed by corporate misconduct in a variety of complex litigation cases.
Aaron Blumenthal
Aaron represents consumers, employees, and whistleblowers in class actions and other complex litigation.