> Obviously I never plan to sue (or be sued by) my employer; I do a great job and any place I choose to work is somewhere I'm sure I'll love This is irrelevant

> Obviously I never plan to sue (or be sued by) my employer; I do a great job and any place I choose to work is somewhere I'm sure I'll love This is irrelevant. These bits in contracts are for cases where your relationship with your employer has completely degraded. If there was no probability of this happening there would be no need to have the clauses in the contract in the first place. You don't even need to frame this as an issue of not trusting the people from the company you are currently negotiating with - in future they may be replaced by other people who will not treat you reasonably, but you may still be restricted by whatever you agreed to in your employment contract.