Chicago Business Litigation Lawyer Blog
After several former employees stole and destroyed internal data from their employer in order to found a competing business, and were sued, the trial court’s appointing of a third party to monitor the new company’s compliance with discovery and restraining orders was not error.
Shamrock Corporation has sold antifreeze, motor oil, and heat transfer fluids since 1974. Eventually, John Dreamer, Sr. became the sole shareholder of Shamrock. When John died, his wife, Annie Dreamer, became the sole shareholder. The entirety of Shamrock’s stock is held in a trust with Annie as the beneficiary.
Shamrock had five employees: John Dreamer, Jr., Les Kreifels, Steven Wroblewski, David Wells, and Chris England. The Dreamer family decided to sell Shamrock and offered Wroblewski and Wells the opportunity to make the first offer. The two submitted an offer that was financially acceptable but included collateral terms that the Dreamer family refused to accept. In August 2017 Shamrock made a counter-offer that revised some of the collateral terms.
In September 2017, Wroblewski and Wells abruptly resigned. England resigned four days later. Just prior to their resignations, the three had Beaver Shredding, Inc. destroy several boxes of documents at Shamrock’s headquarters. The three also deleted large amounts of data from Shamrock’s internal computer system. Prior to the deletion, Wroblewski had uploaded data from the computers to the digital storage site Dropbox. Continue reading ›