Judge Orders BellSouth and Sprint to Resolve Executive"Poaching" Dispute

As we reported yesterday, BellSouth Corporation went to Court to prevent its own Vice Chairman, Gary Foresee, from leaving BellSouth and going to work for business rival, Sprint Corporation. Today in Court, the Judge granted BellSouth a 30-day extension of its Temporary Restraining Order that the Court originally granted that prohibits Mr. Forsee from going to work for Sprint. This ruling was far short of the 18-month bar on Mr. Forsee's employment by any competitor that BellSouth had requested. The Judge ordered that the dispute be resolved through Arbitration proceedings outside of the Courtroom by an impartial arbitrator within 30 days. A BellSouth spokesman, Jeff Battcher, issued a statement that the Judge "recognized that Mr. Forsee was privy to very sensitive, classified, high-level proprietary information at BellSouth." Sprint countered that after the 30-day Arbitration period has passed, it plans to hire and appoint Mr. Forsee as its Chief Executive Officer.