Recently, our client was fortunate to successfully resolve a $4 million faithless servant claim that was brought against him by his former employer for a confidential amount that was well under 10% that plaintiff sought.
Here's the kicker: our client was able to settle this case for that amount even before any depositions were held, which was a huge boon for our client, because he was able to save significant legal defense costs on not needing to conclude document discovery, depose the plaintiff, or to pay for the legal costs inherent in defending his own deposition either.
One of the principal reasons we were able to secure this result for our client was that we were able to demonstrate to the mediator that the plaintiff's claims, which also sought to disgorge our client's profits resulting from our client's alleged diversion of sales leads from his former employer to his own company were misplaced, because the damages the plaintiff sought targeted sales made after he had been terminated, and he never signed any restrictive covenant during his 20+ years working for the plaintiff.
Indeed, in our pre-mediation statement, we summarized our argument as follows:
"[I]t would be illogical to effectively create a post-termination non-solicitation provision that bars departing employees from targeting existing and prospective customers indefinitely, when such restrictive covenants – had they been entered into initially – would have been far more limited as a matter of law."
