Contracts of employment: Restrictive covenants enforced after garden leave

There is no legal basis on which a court can, in enforcing a restrictive covenant by injunction, allow some kind of set-off against the period during which the employee has been on garden leave, holds the Court of Appeal in Armstrong and others v Credit Suisse Asset Management Ltd 15.5.96 Court of Appeal. The court can exercise its discretion in deciding the permissible length of garden leave but, if a restrictive covenant is valid, the employer is entitled to have it enforced according to its terms, subject to all the usual grounds on which an injunction may be withheld. However, in an exceptional case, where a long period of garden leave has already elapsed without any shortening by the court, the court may decline to grant any further protection based on a restrictive covenant.