PHILADELPHIA – A company that manages residential mortgage investment funds has agreed to mutually end litigation against a rival company and an ex-employee for allegedly misusing the company’s trade secrets and confidential information.
The complaint filed by PPR Note Co. LLC on Feb. 12 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, accused L2L Investments GSP REI and Peter Neill of violating the Trade Secrets Act and the Pennsylvania Trade Secrets Act, as well as unfair competition and breach of contract.
PPR Note had demanded a jury trial.
According to the lawsuit, Neill was hired by PPR Note in 2015 to communicate and educate investors or potential investors about the company’s funds. In 2019, Neill left the company and joined defendant GSP, a competitor to PPR Note, as vice president of investor relations.
The complaint alleged that in November 2019 officials of PPR Note began receiving communications from investors that Neill was soliciting them on behalf of GSP.
“During its investigation, PPR Note learned that in the weeks leading up to his departure, Neill began regularly downloading and saving information from PPR Note’s database of actual and potential investors including the names and email addresses of all 24,000 contacts that PPR Note had spent over a decade compiling through extensive marketing efforts,” the lawsuit claimed.
The complaint alleged Neill violated his severance agreement with PPR and asked the court for an award of $10,000 plus other monetary damages as deemed proper.
But on April 23, both parties agreed to mutually end the dispute without any admission of liability or wrongdoing on the part of either side, and agreed to abide by the following conditions:
• Any names and/or contact information of investors that may have obtained from PPR Note’s database by Neill during his employment shall, within 10 days of the date of this consent order, be destroyed by GSP and Neill. GSP and Neill shall provide a verification subject to the penalties set forth in 28 U.S.C. Section 1746 confirming the destruction of all such names and/or contact information subject to this consent order;
• PPR Note and GSP will submit their respective lists of actual and potential investors to KLDiscovery, the latter keeping each party’s Investor List confidential, compare the email addresses on the lists and disclose to counsel for PPR Note, GSP, and Neill the names and email addresses of any overlapping entries, plus maintain no contact for any disputed investors on the list for a period of one year commencing from the date of the order;
• GSP and Neill shall not use or refer to PPR Note or David Van Horn in the marketing materials of GSP or any other entity that creates and/or manages funds that invest in notes backed by real estate, including, but not limited to, print materials, websites, oral presentations, podcasts, articles and all other forms of marketing/advertising. Neill is, however, permitted to state that he is a former employee of PPR Note and, if asked, to generically explain his work at PPR Note.
The plaintiff was represented by Alexander L. Harris, Michael S. Hino and Sean McDevitt of Pepper Hamilton in Berwyn and Philadelphia.
The defendants were represented by Michael J. Burns of Bowen & Burns in Southampton and Thomas B. Helbig Jr. of Elliott Greenleaf, in Blue Bell.
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania case 2:20-cv-00799
From the Pennsylvania Record: Reach Courts Reporter Nicholas Malfitano at nick.malfitano@therecordinc.com