Whenever you fight in court, you have to take account of two aspects of how a court might rule: (1) the technical legal and (2) the "motivational." The former

Whenever you fight in court, you have to take account of two aspects of how a court might rule: (1) the technical legal and (2) the "motivational." The former is what I summarized above but the latter is what motivates a court to want to go one way or the other, as long as it can find a legal "hook" to go that way. As to this, it does matter that Mr. Hurd is head of a multi-billion dollar corporation and that he got a huge severance as part of leaving his employment. Given those facts, judges will be more motivated than otherwise to find a reason why he should be restricted in some fashion as part of his two-year confidentiality agreement. Thus, if the HP lawyers can come up with even a modicum of evidence to show "threatened" compromises of trade secrets, the court might go their way simply out of a sense of justice inspired by the background factors that are not technically relevant to the letter of the law. So, yes, that factor can be relevant in the way just described. By the way, this is why contingent lawyers never go into court with an "unattractive" plaintiff (meaning a "creep" and not physically unattractive) - even if you are technically right on the law, no judge or jury wants to out of their way to reward that which they regard as repulsive. This is always crucial to remember in assessing any case.