Veterinary Non-Competes in Arkansas

Arkansas's general non-compete statute, Ark.

Code § 4-75-101, does not supply the test for a veterinarian: subsection (j)(2), as amended by Act 232 of 2025, exempts anyone holding a professional license under Arkansas Code Title 17, Subtitle 3, and veterinarians are licensed under that subtitle's Chapter 101.

What governs instead is the common law, stated in Azzore Veterinary Specialists, LLC v.

Hodgson — a veterinary case, a dispute between a specialty practice and the veterinary ophthalmologist it had hired over the two-year covenant in his employment agreement, which the ophthalmologist brought to court as a declaratory-judgment action after the employment ended.

The court set out three requirements: the practice must have a valid interest to protect, the geographical restrictions must not be overly broad, and the time limit must be reasonable.

Azzore itself ended without a ruling on the covenant — the Court of Appeals reversed a summary judgment that had voided it and sent the genuine disputes over competition and valid interest back for a trial that the sources read do not report.

Act 232 of 2025 (SB 139) amended § 4-75-101(j) and added subsection (k), which declares void a covenant that restricts a physician's practice within the physician's scope of practice.

The new clause defines 'physician' by cross-reference to the Arkansas Medical Practices Act and the osteopathy act — human-medicine licenses — so a headline about Arkansas voiding healthcare non-competes does not describe a veterinarian's contract.

The same amendment kept the (j)(2) exclusion that matters more: the section does not apply to a person holding a professional license under Title 17, Subtitle 3, and veterinarians are Chapter 101 of that subtitle.

A veterinarian is therefore outside § 4-75-101 entirely — the physician clause and the statute's own mechanics alike.

The statute carries no threshold that helps or binds a veterinarian — its two-year presumption and list of protectable interests apply only to the professions § 4-75-101 actually covers, and (j)(2) takes veterinarians out of that section.

At common law there is no fixed number either: the covenant is tested for a valid interest, geography that is not overly broad, and a reasonable time limit, and the cases read state no duration in months or radius in miles that is presumptively acceptable.

The same court framed the starting point: covenants not to compete are not looked upon with favor by the law.

For an associate comparing offers, that means the length and radius in the contract are judged against what the practice can show it needs to protect, not against a statutory figure.

Two Arkansas Supreme Court decisions define what happens when a covenant runs past the rule.

Bendinger v.

Marshalltown Trowell Co. holds that employment covenants get stricter scrutiny than sale-of-business ones, that the contract must be valid as written, and that the court will not apportion or enforce a contract to the extent it might be considered reasonable — Bendinger's own covenant, which had no geographic limit at all, was held overbroad and its enforcement reversed.

Rector-Phillips-Morse, Inc. v.

Vroman adds that this holds even where the contract itself invites the court to reform it: the court declined to give effect to a clause accepting whatever modification the court may find to be reasonable.

That clause is common in practice contracts — the Azzore covenant carried one.

The mechanics are therefore unforgiving: there is no rewrite step that narrows an overbroad covenant down to acceptable terms.

What the sources read establish is narrow.

Act 232's amendment of subsection (h) keeps existing common-law standards in effect for covenants outside the employment background, and Bendinger states that employment covenants are subject to stricter scrutiny than those connected with a sale of a business — which points to a separate, less searching test for sale covenants without stating what it is.

The sale-of-business test itself was not read for this page, so it is not described here.

A veterinarian buying into or selling out of a practice may sign a covenant drafted alongside the purchase terms rather than the employment terms — take that agreement to an Arkansas attorney who handles practice transactions before signing.

Act 232 of 2025 amended § 4-75-101 in three places.

It added subsection (k), a new rule voiding a physician's covenant that restricts practice within the physician's scope of practice, with 'physician' defined by the Medical Practices Act and osteopathy licenses.

It amended subsection (j) by adding the lead-in 'Except as provided under subsection (k) of this section', so the section's existing exclusions — including the (j)(2) carve-out for Title 17, Subtitle 3 professional licensees — now yield only to the new physician rule.

It amended subsection (h)(1) so that the whole section, not just that subsection, does not apply to covenants ancillary to other relationships such as a business sale; subsection (h)(2)'s preservation of existing common-law standards was already in the statute before this Act.

For a veterinarian, none of this moved the rule: the (j)(2) exclusion stands as confirmed against the amendment, and the common law it leaves in place still supplies the test.

The cases read pre-date the statute: Azzore's covenant was signed in 2010, and the sources read do not establish that an Arkansas appellate court has applied the no-rewrite rule to a Title 17, Subtitle 3 licensee since § 4-75-101 took effect — the rule is stated here as the common law the statute leaves in place for excluded licensees, not as a later holding about one.

The sources read also state no duration or radius number for a veterinarian, and they leave non-solicitation clauses and Arkansas decisions outside the ones cited here unaddressed.

Those gaps matter most when an offer, a buy-in or a dispute turns on a point the cases read do not cover — take it to an Arkansas attorney with the whole agreement in hand.