A Denver judge has ordered a local construction company to return 3,000 confidential files allegedly stolen from a competing builder last month, including hundreds of documents related to an upcoming project that reportedly will generate $20 million in revenue.
District Judge Andrew McCallin gave Precision Contractors in Englewood until Thursday to return any documents stolen from Denver Commercial Builders. But he declined to bar a former DCB employee accused of corporate espionage from working for Precision.
“(DCB)’s trade secrets can be protected through a temporary restraining order that prevents disclosure and use of these trade secrets,” the judge wrote midday on Monday.
Precision and its CEO Bob Hibbard did not answer BusinessDen’s requests for comment.
Late last week, Denver Commercial Builders sued Precision and its employee MaryJane Ellie for theft of trade secrets and civil conspiracy, among other claims. The lawsuit accuses Ellie and Precision of orchestrating a simple plot with potentially huge consequences.
On March 14, Ellie gave DCB her two weeks’ notice after working for 17 months as a preconstruction estimator, according to the lawsuit. Then, over the next two weeks, she moved thousands of files from her employer’s servers to a flash drive, the company alleges.
On March 21, the firm learned from a client that final bids would be due April 4 “for a largescale project in Colorado with expected revenue in excess of $20 million,” according to last week’s lawsuit. A lawyer for DCB declined to share details of that project with BusinessDen.
Four days later, on March 25, a Precision employee emailed a colleague’s former DCB account with contact information for the client on the big project, then tried to recall the email after realizing his mistake, DCB says. This alerted DCB to Precision’s knowledge of the job.
DCB analyzed Ellie’s work computer and reportedly uncovered her theft on March 28, her last day at the firm. DCB said the theft included “the entire electronic file for the ($20 million) project pursuit, which included over 350 documents” and files for several other major construction bids.
Denver Commercial Builders says that when its president texted Ellie on April 2 to reveal he had discovered her wrongdoing, she promised to hand over the files she allegedly took.
“You will have the thumb drive return (sic) to you first thing tomorrow,” she is said to have texted. “I intend to place it within dcb’s drop box in a white envelope with your name on it.”
And she did. But her former firm claims the files on the drive don’t match the files removed from its servers. They believe that she used some of the unreturned files to help Precision outbid DCB for the unnamed $20 million project and will use other documents similarly.
“Ellie has shown she is ready, willing and able to improperly use and disclose DCB’s confidential information, and to lie about it,” that company wrote to McCallin last Friday.
“The information she has in document form is just the tip of the iceberg — she could, and given her past conduct, inevitably will, use the confidential information and trade secrets in her possession to benefit herself and Precision at the expense of DCB,” it said.
McCallin declined to order Precision to hand over any hard drives or computers that could contain DCB trade secrets (“too broad,” he wrote) or prohibit Ellie from working for Precision (“Noncompete provisions are contrary to public policy”) but did order Precision not to use, delete or copy any stolen trade secrets and to return those files to DCB within three days.
Denver Commercial Builders is represented by attorneys Jack Storti and Elizabeth Froehlke at the Boulder firm Berg Hill Greenleaf Ruscitti. Precision does not yet have a lawyer.
Get more business news by signing up for our Economy Now newsletter.