You Never Signed the Noncompete. You Can Still Be Enjoined for Helping Someone Break It.
The short answer
Florida will not enforce a restrictive covenant against someone who did not sign it. That rule is in the statute, and it is often read as the end of the conversation for a competitor that hires, finances or partners with a person who is under a noncompete. It is not.
On September 10, 2026, the Eleventh Circuit affirmed a preliminary injunction that barred a pipeline contractor and its owner from performing future trenchless pipe work within fifty miles of 553 listed locations. Neither had signed the noncompete at issue. The injunction rested instead on a finding that they were substantially likely to have tortiously interfered with it, and the district court used the territory the covenant's signer had already agreed to as the starting point for the relief against them.
The case is PURIS, LLC v. CMG Pipelines, Inc., No. 25-14186 (11th Cir. Sept. 10, 2026) (per curiam), affirming Judge Timothy J. Corrigan's October 30, 2025 order in the Middle District of Florida. The opinion is designated not for publication, so it is persuasive rather than binding authority in the Eleventh Circuit. It is still a useful road map for three groups: companies that buy businesses, companies that do business with people who have sold one, and anyone on the receiving end of a motion like this.
What happened
Andrew Mayer built Murphy Pipeline Contractors into a nationwide company that rehabilitates municipal water and sewer lines, much of it "trenchless," using a proprietary process the company calls CompressionFit. In 2020 he sold Murphy to PURIS for $55 million and stayed on as president, with general management responsibility for Murphy's work across the United States.
As part of the sale, Mayer signed a noncompete. According to the Eleventh Circuit, it ran for the term of his employment and eighteen months afterward and barred him from competing with Murphy, soliciting or diverting its customers, raiding its employees, or supporting a competing business. Its "Restricted Territory" reached fifty miles around "any and all" company locations for which he was assigned or responsible, and the customer account locations he handled.
The appellate opinion describes what came next largely through Mayer's own words. Within months of the sale, it says, Mayer resolved to "get [his] company back." In a document he titled "THE PLAN," Mayer wrote that he had put the plan in place in 2021 as a "fall back" and agreed to become the "silent partner" of CMG Pipelines, then a local Louisiana contractor doing excavation and supporting work, owned by Carmelo Gutierrez. CMG, he wrote, was "set up to gather experience in the same fields as Murphy," and with Mayer "at the helm of Murphy," he could send work its way.
The record described in the opinion is specific. While still Murphy's president, Mayer directed Murphy subcontracts and opportunities to CMG, shared information about projects Murphy was pursuing, and helped CMG obtain an exclusive license to a competing technology called Die-Draw. By 2024 CMG was bidding trenchless projects in markets where it had not operated before. Mayer then worked to sell CMG to Crown Electrokinetics for $30 million, with Mayer and Gutierrez each to receive forty percent, and sent the prospective buyer the Plan and a project "Funnel" that, with a few exceptions, tracked Murphy's confidential project-development list. CMG hired at least 27 former Murphy employees, Murphy lost expected work from a Nebraska customer after CMG hired the people who managed that account, and CMG approached the Town of Davie about work "similar to what [Davie had] in place for Murphy."
PURIS sued Mayer in February 2025. He initially denied breaching the covenant, then stipulated to a preliminary injunction barring him from trenchless rehabilitation work within fifty miles of 553 locations that PURIS's CEO had identified in a sworn declaration. The court entered that stipulated order on April 16, 2025.
How the court reached people who never signed
PURIS then added CMG and Gutierrez and sought a separate injunction. Florida's restrictive covenant statute provides that "[a] court shall not enforce a restrictive covenant unless it is set forth in a writing signed by the person against whom enforcement is sought." Fla. Stat. section 542.335(1)(a). The district court did not try to get around that rule. It treated the request as one for relief on a tort claim, and told the parties at the September 2025 hearing that because CMG and Gutierrez had not signed Mayer's covenant, it would require "a substantial showing" before enjoining them.
It found that showing. Short of "them just all saying, 'I agree, I did it,'" Judge Corrigan remarked, it would be "hard . . . to think there'd be a case where there'd be a lot more evidence than this." His written order found a substantial likelihood of success on the tortious interference claims, irreparable harm, a favorable balance of harms, and no contrary public interest.
On appeal, the CMG parties did not challenge the likelihood-of-success finding. They argued only that the harm was compensable in money and that the geographic scope was too broad. The Eleventh Circuit rejected both arguments and emphasized the distinction that made the order possible: the district court "did not blindly enforce Mayer's contract against non-signatories." It enjoined their own conduct, which it found was likely tortious.
Irreparable harm, without the statutory presumption
Section 542.335(1)(j) provides that violation of an enforceable restrictive covenant "creates a presumption of irreparable injury." The appellate opinion does not rely on that presumption. It analyzes harm under ordinary Eleventh Circuit injunction law, which may be the more useful signal for cases against non-signatories.
The court drew a line between two kinds of loss. The profit on a particular contract might be calculable. But the loss of customers and goodwill is irreparable, the court said, quoting BellSouth Telecommunications, Inc. v. MCIMetro Access Transmission Services, LLC, 425 F.3d 964, 970 (11th Cir. 2005), and broader losses such as poached employees, reputational damage and a weakened competitive position are "far more difficult (if not impossible)" to measure, quoting Yorktown Systems Group, Inc. v. Threat Tec LLC, 108 F.4th 1287, 1296 to 97 (11th Cir. 2024).
The district court's order tracked that line. It let CMG finish work already underway, reasoning that damages could likely address completed and ongoing projects. It enjoined two projects on which work had not begun, barred future trenchless work in the territory, and specifically prohibited soliciting PURIS or Murphy customers, raiding their employees, and using their confidential information. One New Orleans contract it allowed to continue only provisionally, giving PURIS leave to take discovery from the City of New Orleans and to seek to enjoin that work once more evidence about the effect on the public was developed.
Borrowing the signer's territory
The scope fight turned on two words in Mayer's covenant: "Company locations." CMG read the phrase to mean PURIS's sixteen corporate offices, on which, they argued, a 553-location injunction was far too broad. PURIS read it to include the places where it performed, bid on or pursued pipeline work.
The Eleventh Circuit did not resolve that contract dispute. It held that the question was what relief was necessary to stop the defendants' own conduct while the case proceeded, and that a court has considerable discretion in answering it. Quoting its earlier decision in Cumulus Media, Inc. v. Clear Channel Communications, Inc., 304 F.3d 1167, 1178 to 79 (11th Cir. 2002), the court observed that "[a]n injunction can be therapeutic as well as protective," and may reach conduct that, standing alone, would have been lawful.
The district court, the panel said, used the territory Mayer had accepted "as the starting point" and then decided whether to apply it to the CMG parties. That was supported by the record: Mayer had nationwide responsibility for Murphy's work, PURIS's CEO had sworn to the 553 locations, and Mayer had agreed the same list would govern his own injunction. The CMG parties offered a competing reading of the contract but no evidence that Mayer's responsibilities were confined to sixteen offices, and did not identify a single location on the list that fell outside his work.
A footnote adds a procedural warning. PURIS argued that CMG had waived the scope objection by not raising it in its opposition or at the first hearing, even though PURIS had asked for an injunction "to the same extent as Mayer." The panel reached the argument only because the district court heard it at the second hearing.
What this means in practice
If you are buying a business. Florida gives a covenant against the seller of a business more room than one against an ordinary employee: a restraint of three years or less against a seller is presumed reasonable in time, and only one longer than seven years is presumed unreasonable. Fla. Stat. section 542.335(1)(d)3. But the covenant is only as useful as the record behind it. What carried this case was a sworn, specific list of locations tied to the seller's actual responsibilities, and a seller who agreed to it. Define the territory by reference to the seller's real footprint and be prepared to prove that footprint quickly.
If you are hiring, financing or partnering with someone who sold a business. The signature rule protects you from enforcement of the covenant itself. It does not protect you from a tort claim for knowingly helping someone breach it, and the resulting injunction can be as broad as the one the signer faces. The same caution applies to a company evaluating an acquisition. A target whose growth traces to an insider at a competitor may carry that competitor's lawsuit with it.
If you are the defendant. Contest scope early, and contest it with evidence. A better reading of the contract did not help the CMG parties because they offered nothing to show the 553 locations were wrong. Ask for tailoring: the district court here carved out work already underway, deferred a public contract pending more evidence, and was receptive to the practical effect on municipal customers. Plan for the customer consequences as well. The order required CMG to deliver a copy of the injunction to the counterparty on every enjoined contract within five days.
Watch the clock. As entered, the order against CMG ran for the earlier of eighteen months from March 25, 2025 or the conclusion of the case, unless the court modified it. Covenant litigation is a race against the covenant's own term, and the appeal here was decided about two weeks before that eighteen-month period would have run.
What the case does not decide
It is a preliminary ruling. No one has been found liable, and the CMG parties did not contest likelihood of success on appeal, so the Eleventh Circuit did not address the merits of the tortious interference claim. The case remains pending in the Middle District of Florida.
It is also unpublished. Under Eleventh Circuit Rule 36-2, it may be cited as persuasive authority but does not bind future panels.
Finally, this was a sale-of-business covenant signed by a founder who stayed on as president with nationwide responsibility. A court asked to extend an ordinary employee's covenant territory to a new employer may find that record harder to replicate. For context, the Federal Trade Commission's 2024 rule banning most noncompetes is no longer a factor: the Commission removed its Non-Compete Clause Rule from the Code of Federal Regulations in February 2026, citing federal court decisions. State law, in Florida principally section 542.335, continues to govern.
Sources
PURIS, LLC v. CMG Pipelines, Inc., No. 25-14186 (11th Cir. Sept. 10, 2026) (per curiam) (not for publication).
PURIS LLC v. Mayer, No. 3:25-cv-00157-TJC (M.D. Fla. Oct. 30, 2025) (Order Granting Preliminary Injunction Against CMG Parties, Doc. 200).
Fla. Stat. section 542.335(1)(a), (1)(d)3 and (1)(j).
BellSouth Telecommunications, Inc. v. MCIMetro Access Transmission Services, LLC, 425 F.3d 964 (11th Cir. 2005); Yorktown Systems Group, Inc. v. Threat Tec LLC, 108 F.4th 1287 (11th Cir. 2024); Cumulus Media, Inc. v. Clear Channel Communications, Inc., 304 F.3d 1167 (11th Cir. 2002).
Federal Trade Commission, Revision of the Negative Option Rule, Withdrawal of the CARS Rule, Removal of the Non-Compete Rule to Conform these Rules to Federal Court Decisions (final rule published Feb. 12, 2026).
Disclaimer
This post discusses publicly reported legal developments for general informational purposes. It is not legal advice, it does not create an attorney client relationship, and it does not reflect the firm's position in any pending matter. Outcomes depend on the specific facts and the governing law of the relevant jurisdiction.