Micro Plus, Inc. v. Forte Data Sys., Inc.

484 So. 2d 1340
CourtDistrict Court of Appeal of Florida
DecidedMarch 12, 1986
Docket85-866, 85-943
StatusPublished

This text of 484 So. 2d 1340 (Micro Plus, Inc. v. Forte Data Sys., Inc.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court of Appeal of Florida primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Micro Plus, Inc. v. Forte Data Sys., Inc., 484 So. 2d 1340 (Fla. Ct. App. 1986).

Opinion

484 So.2d 1340 (1986)

MICRO PLUS, INC., Appellant,
v.
FORTE DATA SYSTEMS, INC., and Jay Anderson, Individually, Appellees.
Jay ANDERSON, Appellant,
v.
FORTE DATA SYSTEMS, INC., and Micro Plus, Inc., a Corporation, Appellees.

Nos. 85-866, 85-943.

District Court of Appeal of Florida, Fourth District.

March 12, 1986.

*1341 Donald W. Giffin, of Giffin & Thellman, Tampa, for Micro Plus, Inc.

Robert L. Beals, of Price, Kaczmarek & Beals, Boca Raton, for Jay Anderson.

James L. Armstrong, III, and Anthony Deglomine, III, of Smathers & Thompson, Miami, for appellee-Forte Data Systems.

PER CURIAM.

A.

Since 1974, Washington and Lee University has published Social Responsibility: Business, Journalism, Law, Medicine. In this year's edition, Associate Professor Kenneth E. Goodpaster of Harvard University's Graduate School of Business Administration, has presented his lecture, An Agenda for Applied Ethics, in which he says:

"Mark what I am going to say, Unless either philosophers become kings or those who are now called kings and rulers come to be sufficiently inspired with a genuine desire for wisdom; unless, that is to say, power and philosophy meet together, there can be no rest from troubles, ... There is no other way of happiness either for the state or for the individual."
— Socrates in Plato's Republic, Book V, Chapter XVIII
I.
Socrates was convinced that the relevance of ethics to the world of individual and institutional decision-making was profound. Philosophers needed to become kings or kings needed to become philosophical. In our contemporary context, perhaps we could restate this conviction in terms of professionals and corporate managers — the new "royalty" in our society of organizations.
It was not enough, in the view of Socrates, that philosophers commune with ideas of the good and the just — not even enough that they try in their private or personal lives to embody such ideas. Nor was it enough that professionals and managers be men and women of "good will," doing their best to keep their hands clean in the exercise of power.
Somehow the personal quest for wisdom had to be integrated with institutional management and institutional management had to be inspired by the manager's quest for wisdom. Only in this way would it be possible to avoid a double standard. Only in this way would it be possible to avoid a radical discontinuity between the microcosmic demands of personal virtue and the macrocosmic demands of institutional policy and governance. It was these "troubles" I suggest, the troubles of double standards and discontinuity — moral incoherence — *1342 from which Socrates encouraged us to seek rest.
It is not terribly comforting to notice that the problems posed by Socrates predated modern science, the industrial revolution, capitalism, and the rise of bureaucratic organizations. For these major historical developments have unquestionably complicated our task. They have given rise to sophisticated technologies, professional specializations, and organizational forms that stagger our understanding if they do not weaken our will.
As if this were not enough, we come to the challenges of applied ethics suffering as much from disciplinary myopia as from ideological fragmentation. Skilled at analysis, we are embarrassed by the demands of synthesis. Rewarded for theory, we are too often dumb before the questions of the practitioner.

Id. at 5-6.

This case involves an appeal from a non-final order granting a temporary injunction.[1]*1343

*1344 The writer believed this concurrence was warranted, notwithstanding the temporary nature of the order, to emphasize this writer's belief that the judicial system, with its adversarial proceedings, is used most appropriately in disputes such as the present scenario in which the parties have been dealing throughout at arm's length. However, in (a) familial matters such as probate and dissolution proceedings wherein the parties may well wish to resolve their personal disputes without traumatizing their families or each other and (b) business partnerships wherein the individuals do not wish to destroy their personal relationships while resolving their business disputes, surely there has to be an alternative to the adversarial process.

In the same series of lectures quoted hereinabove, Judge Randall T. Bell of the South Carolina Court of Appeals, entitled his lecture, The Lawyer as Guardian, and said:

When a person with a grievance believes litigation is available, his perception of the disputing process changes. Lawyers and litigating are receiving unprecedented attention in the popular media. A new "rights consciousness" has developed among segments of our society, displacing the former passive acceptance of all kinds of social and economic evils with an activism that often manifests itself in courtrooms. No great leap of logic is required to conclude that the wide publicity given all types of litigation influences perceptions about the entire disputing process.
Moreover, if the dispute is litigated, the process of litigation itself radically transforms the dispute. Many a layman has brought a dispute to law only to see it bent and twisted and reshaped beyond recognition by a process he does not understand for reasons he cannot comprehend. In the end he is faced with an inescapable sense of loss, for when the lawyers and the courts are finished, it is no longer his dispute, the dispute he brought to them in the beginning. A good deal of the popular mistrust of lawyers can be explained as the natural reaction to this process of transformation which robs the dispute of its meaning in lay terms.

Id. at 30 (footnotes omitted).

B.

The appeal also provides the writer with the opportunity to voice his value judgments with respect to contracts of this nature. The legislature has expressly recognized their validity by adoption of Section 542.33(2)(a).[2] This writer has previously addressed the statute in other cases which do not bear citing for the sake of repetition. However, Judge Hersey's important opinion in Silvers v. Dis-Com Securities, Inc., 403 So.2d 1133 (Fla. 4th DCA 1981), does warrant quoting:

Implicit in our holding is a recognition that irreparable injury may be presumed in cases involving violation of a covenant not to compete or not to divulge trade secrets. It need not be alleged nor proved.

Id. at 1136.

In Megatrends (1984), John Naisbitt complimented this state as being one of the *1345 five states in which most social invention occurs. Id. at xxvii. While recognizing the ideas of Plato may not be socially inventive, recognizing the importance of contracts and the judiciary's readiness to enforce them hopefully will discourage their breach and a resulting adversarial proceeding. Today, Plato might suggest that preying be limited to the waters east of A-1-A, not the commercial world west of it.

NOTES

[1] The order reads:

THIS CAUSE came on for hearing by the Court on the motion for temporary injunction of plaintiff, Forte Data Systems, Inc.'s [sic] ("Forte").

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Related

Silvers v. Dis-Com Securities, Inc.
403 So. 2d 1133 (District Court of Appeal of Florida, 1981)
Capelouto v. Orkin Exterminating Co. of Florida
183 So. 2d 532 (Supreme Court of Florida, 1966)
Gunston v. United States
385 U.S. 964 (Supreme Court, 1966)

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484 So. 2d 1340, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/micro-plus-inc-v-forte-data-sys-inc-fladistctapp-1986.