What We Do

Representative Experience

Manufacturing

• Successfully secured a preliminary injunction against the former owner, majority shareholder and seller of a business who had executed a non-compete ancillary to the sale of that business. During the trial, the defendant consented to the issuance of a permanent injunction and to damages offsetting deferred compensation.
• Represented a manufacturer in one of the first cases filed in the United States under the Federal Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) to obtain injunctive relief in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois against the company’s chief science officer and a new startup competitor he joined. The firm’s client specialized in fitness equipment. As the TRO papers disclosed, for over a year (while drawing a salary from the company), the inventor worked with his employer’s primary distributor to secretively develop a competitive technology, feeding all of the trade secrets to the new competitor to develop the second generation of the client’s technology. By bringing the case under the new DTSA, the firm obtained a TRO maintaining jurisdiction in federal court. The TRO included broad injunctive relief, halting sales of the competitive product, escrowing any ill-gotten profits, and resulting in a favorable settlement following court-ordered mediation.

Medical Professionals

• On behalf of an orthopedic surgeon who had signed a covenant not to compete with a private practice, we successfully persuaded the employer not to institute litigation when the physician left his employment. No compensation of any kind was paid by the surgeon to his former practice.

Patent/Cutting Edge Technology

• Successfully defended a professor and other physicians and technicians in a university laboratory in an alleged trade secret disclosure dispute involving the measurement of T-cell secretions, an important stepping stone in identification of the cure for AIDS. Although the state trial court awarded a TRO preventing disclosure of the alleged trade secret by the professor in a speech before the World Health Organization, we removed the dispute to federal court, sought to dissolve the TRO and procured a voluntary dismissal of the entire lawsuit minutes before the depositions of the plaintiff’s representatives were about to be taken. The client, through our business group, later secured the technology for commercial development.

Financial Services

• Represented a publicly held financial institution in prosecution of claims against two former bank employees who left the client’s employment to join a competitor. The ex-employees were bound by confidentiality agreements and had agreed not to solicit their employer’s customers for a period of time. Nevertheless, between them they took hundreds of confidential documents from the client and were actively soliciting several customers. We filed for injunctive relief in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas against the former employees and their new employer. The new employer produced more records and agreed to forensically remediate all of the client’s documents that had been introduced into its system by the bankers. Sanctions were obtained against the lawyer for one of the defendants due to failure to comply with a court discovery order, and the court issued a preliminary injunction against both defendants’ further use of trade secrets, including prospect lists, and ordered all data and documents to be turned over to our client.

Commercial Enterprises

• Successfully defended the Vice President of Sales who allegedly violated a non-compete agreement by beginning to work for a direct competitor in the packaging business. Money damages were not paid on behalf of the defendants, and the dispute was resolved when the parties agreed that certain customers would not be contacted for a period of time. This agreement had negligible impact upon our client’s ability to move forward.
• After a seven-week bench trial in New Jersey State Chancery Court, we obtained a judgment in favor of our client awarding damages for lost profits and attorneys’ fees for breaches of fiduciary duty, breach of the duty of loyalty, theft of trade secrets and confidential information and related conspiracy, as well as tortious interference with business opportunity. Also, we secured defense verdicts as to counterclaims and third-party claims against the company and its majority shareholder. We successfully obtained a TRO, immediately after filing the action, directing defendants to turn over all of their personal computers and electronic devices for forensic examination, as well as an order of non-competition by the former director, and we preliminarily enjoined defendants from utilizing the company’s trade secrets and confidential and proprietary information. We won a substantial award of attorneys’ fees under the state theft of trade secrets statute, and additional fees for spoliation and violation of a court order.

Accountants

• Represented the founder and several partners of an accounting firm which was in danger of dissolution when a major business producing partner decided to form his own firm. Although a lawsuit was filed by the departing partner, the dispute was resolved following protracted negotiations by which myriad issues, including unfair competition and trade secret disclosure allegations, were made.

Marketing/Advertising

• Represented two major firms in this area. In the first case, our client employed an entire division of a competing advertising firm with specialization in the high performance automotive field. The plaintiff/former employer never requested preliminary injunctive relief, and the matter was settled based upon installment payments which were particularly affordable in light of the significant volume of business which was generated. The suit was settled in order to avoid the cost and inconvenience of litigation. In the second matter, we provided advice to a leading marketing/advertising firm when it similarly hired away a competitor’s major producer/officer. We guided the new employer/client throughout the process and were prepared to, at any time, file a declaratory judgment action, which filing proved to be unnecessary. This matter evidences our cost effective approach to even emergency matters such as these.
• We have successfully prosecuted claims involving breach of non-competition and non-solicitation agreements on behalf of one of the nation’s leading providers of outsourced business services. The lawsuits have been pursued in state and federal courts in Cleveland and in cities outside Ohio. We have secured relief in the form of temporary restraining orders, preliminary injunctions and permanent injunctions.
• Have successfully prosecuted cases involving claims of trade secret misappropriation and breach of non-competition agreements on behalf of a publisher of classifieds and editorial magazines with over ten-thousand employees.
• Have successfully defended a former employee of a company that purchased medical bad debt. The case, filed in federal district court in Cleveland, alleged that the former employee misappropriated trade secrets and violated a non-competition agreement. We demonstrated that documents in the employee’s possession were not confidential and that the non-competition provision at issue could not be enforced by a successor company.
• Represented a top direct-mail service provider in the defense of claims arising from the departure of six employees who left a competitor’s employment to join the client company. The competitor filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, asserting claims against its former employees under the DTSA, the Illinois Trade Secrets Act, and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, among others, and claims of tortious interference with economic advantage, aiding and abetting breach of fiduciary duty, unfair competition, civil conspiracy and unjust enrichment against the firm’s client. At the outset of the case, the firm defeated the competitor’s emergency motion for sweeping temporary injunctive relief.