Law firms can impose "reasonable" financial penalties on partners who leave to work someone else, the Arizona Supreme Court has ruled, but the lawyers who leave cannot be stopped from practicing elsewhere. In a 4-1 ruling, the justices reversed a year-old decision of the state Court of Appeals that had voided a contract financially penalizing William Fearnow when he left his law firm. The Court of Appeals judges said that kind of sanction is an illegal restrictive covenant. But the Supreme Court concluded that the appellate judges got it only half right. .