Stephens

The defendant has appealed from a judgment restraining him “from further engaging in the undertaking business, or business similar thereto, in the city of Fresno, so long as plaintiffs, or any person deriving title to the good will of said business from plaintiffs, carry on said or like business in said city of Fresno.”

There is no substantial conflict in the evidence. For many years the plaintiffs and defendant were partners in the business of general undertakers and funeral directors in the city of Fresno, under the firm name of Stephens & Bean. On the thirty-first day of May, 1919, the defendant sold his interest in the business and property of the firm to the plaintiffs for the sum of thirty-five thousand dollars and executed the following instrument of transfer:

The defendant testified that he had been in the undertaking business with the firm of Stephens & Bean for twenty-five or thirty years; that at the time of the trial, November 15, 1922, he was in the employ of the Mission Undertaking Company, a corporation, undertakers and funeral directors in the city of Fresno, and had been in the employ of such corporation since the first of April, 1922; that he assists in…