Legal Definitions - enticement

Enticement refers to the act of improperly persuading or luring someone to do something, often with the intention of causing harm or gaining an unfair advantage. While historically it referred specifically to the civil wrong of convincing a spouse to leave their partner, its modern usage is broader and focuses on the wrongful nature of the persuasion.

Here are some examples to illustrate the concept of enticement:

• Example 1: Employment Poaching

  Imagine a scenario where a rival technology company actively contacts a senior software engineer working for a competitor. The rival company knows this engineer is crucial to an ongoing, sensitive project and is bound by a non-compete agreement. Despite this, the rival company offers an exorbitant salary, a lavish signing bonus, and promises of rapid promotion, specifically encouraging the engineer to breach their existing contract and bring proprietary information with them. This would be considered enticement because the rival company is wrongfully luring the engineer away with the intent to harm the competitor and gain an unfair advantage, potentially involving a breach of contract and theft of trade secrets.

• Example 2: Luring a Minor

  Consider an adult who uses false promises of a lucrative scholarship and a guaranteed spot on a prestigious sports team to convince a talented high school athlete to move to a different state, away from their parents and school, with the ulterior motive of exploiting the athlete's image for personal gain without proper consent or legal guardianship. This constitutes enticement because the adult is wrongfully soliciting and luring a minor under false pretenses for an improper purpose, potentially endangering the minor and violating parental rights.

• Example 3: Contractual Interference

  Suppose a real estate developer has a signed contract with a construction company for a major building project. A competing developer, wanting to delay the first project, approaches the construction company's project manager and offers them a significantly higher-paying position on a different, less demanding project, specifically conditioning the offer on the project manager abandoning their current contract with the first developer. This act of offering a better deal to induce a breach of an existing contract could be seen as enticement, as the competing developer is wrongfully luring the project manager away to interfere with the first developer's contractual agreement.