Mason v Provident Clothing and Supply Co Ltd: 1913

To uphold restrictions which a covenant imposes upon the freedom of action of the servant after he has left the service of the master, the master must satisfy the Court that the restrictions are no greater than are reasonably necessary for the protection of the master in his business.
Courts should be reluctant to read down a potentially excessively wide covenant to make it enforceable. If severance is sought, the court should ask whether that which is unenforceable ‘part of the main purport and substance’ of the clause in which it appears?
Lord Moulton said: ‘It would in my opinion be pessimi exempli if, when an employer had exacted a covenant deliberately framed in unreasonably wide terms, the Courts were to come to his assistance and, by applying their ingenuity and knowledge of the law, carve out of this void covenant the maximum of what he might validly have required. It must be remembered that the real sanction at the back of these covenants is the terror and expense of litigation, in which the servant is usually at a great disadvantage, in view of the longer purse of his master.’
Lord Moulton
[1913] AC 724
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Updated: 07 December 2020; Ref: scu.416384