Sometimes, in the litigation world, you take over a case and inherit a bit of a mess.
This could not be more true in the context of non-compete cases, because in this realm, you can - as happened in this case - walk in with an imminent court appearance and hearing date, and the other side (the plaintiff/former employer) already has a temporary restraining order ("TRO" in shorthand) against your clients.
The Nature of the Case
In this case, the plaintiff, my client's former employer, claimed that my client had purloined their "trade secret" information gained while working for them, and then breached his fiduciary duties to plaintiff, and used it to unfairly compete with them. They tracked my client's online activity, and even retained an investigator to try to verify my client's sales to ascertain and prove that my client was, in fact, directly competing with them, and doing so in violation of the non-compete agreement he had signed while working for them.
What Plaintiff Did to Try to Protect Their "Trade Secret" Information
Plaintiff then made an application to the Court, without notice to my client (in legalese, this is called an "ex parte" application), asking the Court to issue an order barring my client from buying or selling online the same kind of goods that he had been selling while working for plaintiff.
In other words, they were trying to put my client out of business.
The Court signed the TRO, and my client hired counsel to defend him.
One of the Biggest Mistakes My Client Made
Unfortunately for my client, litigating non-competes was not squarely within the wheelhouse of the attorneys he hired. After two court appearances and one set of motion papers, he was out over $80,000 - and nothing material in the case had happened. As a result, he looked and asked around for attorneys who specialize in the area of non-compete litigation, and finally ended up hiring us.
What Happened Next
After getting a short adjournment of the court date, in order just to get acquainted with the case, we were able to determine that:
1) The judge on the case (who has since retired from the bench) was clearly out of his element - and did not know this area of the law well;
2) A careful review of the plaintiff's moving papers, that were rather substantial in number (I believe they had about 50 exhibits and totaled several hundred pages), it was rather clear that plaintiff did not establish that they, in fact, had any true "trade secrets" at all.
What We Did
As a result, we made an application to the Court ("moved," or "made a motion" in lawyers' parlance) to vacate its prior order granting the TRO, and highlighted how the plaintiff had gone to great pains and lengths to avoid disclosing any details of their supposed "trade secrets" - because, we argued, there really weren't any.
The Result
While the motion was pending, we engaged plaintiff's counsel in serious settlement discussions, which resulted in a deal whereby our client paid plaintiff $0 - that's right - NOTHING. Yes, my client had to agree to honor a limited non-compete with his former employer (in line with what he had previously signed with plaintiff), but in his view, this was certainly viewed as a win.
