As best as Robert Slack can figure, he’s the reason Toppling Goliath has non-competes in the first place. He worked as a brewer at Toppling Goliath from September 2010 through October 2014, eventually leaving because of dissatisfaction with his worklife. He says he was putting in 60-70 hours a week on a $22,000/year salary with no overtime or benefits, eventually rising to $28,000. He’d occasionally receive some kind of “bonus” that might come in the form of a collection of beers or a night out on the company dime.

“I actually made more money when I started part-time because I legally had to make overtime,” he says.

It was time to go after four years because morale was low. He didn’t feel respected as an employee and suggests that, despite a team effort at the brewery, he felt that “people at the top” were taking credit and benefitting from Toppling Goliath’s success rather than sharing it with everyone. This complaint is similar to one made several months later, according to The Growler, in which then-brewmaster Mike Saboe quit because founder Clark Lewey “had publicly taken credit for beers he created.” Saboe returned to Toppling Goliath about four months later.

“I’m from Northeast Iowa, born and raised,” Saboe tells GBH. “It feels like family here and sometimes you get into a spat with a family member. I know that it didn't go down the best way possible, but I think it’s really only strengthened the relationship, especially between myself and the brewery.”

In fall of 2014, Toppling Goliath was the only brewery in Decorah, but Slack and fellow brewer, Justin Teff, were recruited to join its second. Founded by Peter Espinosa and three family members local to the city, Pulpit Rock Brewing Co. would open about a year later and less than a five-mile drive from Toppling Goliath.

“After I left,” Slack says, “[non-competes] became enforced or imposed.”

Before Teff was fired from Toppling Goliath in 2014 for reasons he says were related to insubordination, he says his role within the brewery was, at times, strange. When he first started, he’d be sent to clean tanks or the breakroom, which is normal stuff for a beginner brewery employee, “but it was coming from other brewers that it was a tactic to distract me or keep me away from what was going on,” he adds, suggesting that there was worry Teff would learn some form of trade secret and eventually give it away.

Along with Slack and Teff, who now serve as co-head brewers at Pulpit Rock, current Pulpit Rock brewer Mike Anderson also spent time at Toppling Goliath at the start of his career. He came to the brewery after a stint in corporate sales and advertising and started as a server in the brewery’s taproom in May 2013, shifting over to the production side that summer when additional staff was needed. He went from pouring beers to mopping floors and cleaning tanks to brewing assistant in short order.

On Nov. 17, 2014, Anderson says he was preparing a tank for a brew day when Lewey pulled him aside and showed him a five-page non-compete contract. It was a month after Slack had left and it didn’t come as a huge surprise, he recalls. Other employees had been suggesting the legal action was inevitable with a Pulpit Rock opening on the way. According to Anderson, the ensuing back-and-forth with Lewey sealed his fate.

Anderson says that he first asked to take the paperwork home to review, which Lewey would not allow. He then asked about having a lawyer look at it, which he says was also denied. Eventually, he says he was able to go elsewhere in the brewery and review it alone. He was turned off by language not allowing him to work in the industry for “a few years” if within 150 miles. He wouldn’t sign it.

“At that moment he walked me out the door and fired me on the spot for changing the arrangement of existing employment,” Anderson says.

He drove home and contacted a lawyer to explore a wrongful termination lawsuit, but was told it wouldn’t be easy to win. Instead, he filed paperwork for unemployment assistance, which he says Lewey challenged, forcing it to mediation a week later. When it came time for a conference call to discuss the claim, nobody from Toppling Goliath joined, allowing for the claim to then go uncontested and be filed.