In a suit in Cameron County, Texas, we defended an oil trading firm against its competitor’s claims of tortious interference and theft of trade secrets. The plaintiff dismissed the case after we filed our Motion to Dismiss under the Texas Anti-SLAPP statute.

Represented major international engineering company in prosecution of trade-secrets and fiduciary-duty claims against former senior executive and that employee’s new employer. Our client’s former executive acquired numerous trade secrets and corporate confidences and disclosed them to new employer as he negotiated favorable compensation package with new employer. After obtaining temporary restraining order, temporary injunction, fast-track trial setting, six months of discovery, and favorable rulings denying defendants’ motions for summary judgment, case settled confidentially the weekend before jury selection. Case involved numerous complex transactions and acts of theft, including international contract bids, massive digital downloads, and highly sensitive strategic corporate transactions.

We have defended numerous former brokers of Edward Jones & Co., L.P. in cases accusing those brokers of “pirating” customers or otherwise violating their covenants not to solicit. In reality, the customers followed the brokers because they viewed the relationship was with the advisor, not Edward Jones. For example, former Edward Jones advisor Melanie Housden obtained a release from Edward Jones’s claims without having to pay a dime of consideration while keeping her right to speak out. Melanie’s story has received substantial coverage in the wealth-management industry, here, here, here, and here.

We represented the plaintiff, an insurance brokerage agent, who had underwritten roughly $212,000,000 in life insurance that had generated commissions of $15,000,000. The defendant seller of the policies lacked the skills or the contacts to conduct the underwriting, so he asked our client to do the work, promising to pay him 5% of the commissions, or $750,000. The agreement was oral, but later documentation supported its existence, as well as our client’s prior course of dealing on other transactions in which the defendant seller had paid 5%.

Unbeknownst to our client, however, the defendant seller had promised half of the commissions to two other agents as a way of settling an unrelated dispute. We filed suit and after a week of trial, the jury found for our client all unpaid commissions ($625,000 of the $750,000), validating our client’s 5% oral contract as well as his claims for fraud, conversion, and breach of fiduciary duty. Moreover, the jury found that we had proven fraud by clear and convincing evidence, entitling our client to punitive damages. The court called the defendant back to trial for the punitive damages phase the same day, but before that happened, the case settled favorably for our client.

Obtained award for contractual severance plus all attorney’s fees and arbitration costs for oil-and-gas executive terminated without cause. Employer had terminated executive without cause in oral conversation, but denied that conversation and argued in the final arbitration hearing that any termination without cause had to be in writing; employer argued that employee made up the oral termination and abandoned his job. However, executive had turned in his keys, swipe card, and access cards; collected personal items; and said goodbye to coworkers. After two days of final hearing, the arbitrator rejected employer’s contentions, granting full relief on executive’s contractual claims.

We represented non-destructive testing and inspection company against a competitor’s claim of tortious interference and theft of trade secrets. This case involved a novel issue of federal jurisdiction over disputes related to foreign arbitration agreements under the Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards. We obtained dismissal of all of the competitor’s claims. In a subsequent suit against the same competitor, we obtained summary judgment against competitor in Judge Sim Lake’s court awarding $2.1 million in damages.