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TRADE SECRETS, NON-COMPETE CLAUSES
AND DISPUTES BETWEEN COMPETITORS
When
an employee quits for the purpose of starting a competing business,
or joining a competitor, three types of legal claims may typically
be asserted:
- Claims
that the departing employee breached fiduciary duties
owing to the former employer, usually by commencing competition
while still employed.
- Claims
that the departing employee breached a non-compete or
non-solicitation clause that he had signed with his previous
employer.
- Claims
that the departing employee has engaged in the actual,
threatened or “inevitable” theft of trade secrets
owned by the employer.
Carmen Caruso has represented both
employers or employees in over a dozen of these cases, in which one
or more of these claims were alleged.
These cases are always very fact intensive.
Further, these cases usually originate as a
claim for emergency court relief in the form of a Motion for
Temporary Restraining Order (TRO), in which there is very little
time for either side to prepare.
Therefore, experience counts in selecting a lawyer for these
cases. Among the types
of these cases that Mr. Caruso has litigated:
- Claims
of theft of trade secrets brought by employers in numerous
industries against their departing employees, who possessed key
information about their employers customers and their suppliers.
- Defense
of claims that departing managerial employees in a nurse
staffing agency commenced competition while still employed by
their former employer, and that these employees allegedly
downloaded all of the employer’s financial data in
order to facilitate their own financial planning’ and that
they alleged revealed their employer’s financial secrets to a
bank where they sought financing.
Despite the ominous nature of these allegations, Mr.
Caruso achieved a nuisance value settlement which
enabled his clients to remain in business.
- Defense
of claims that lawyers who migrated from one firm to another
engaged in improper client solicitation before resigning from
their old firm.
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