The Chicago Tribune's business reporter, Ameet Sachdev, writes this morning on the hotly contested dispute between Kathleen Lawlor and North American Corp. of Illinois, a case recently tried to judgment in the Circuit Court of Cook County.
The dispute touches upon a number of hair-trigger employment law issues, including rights to privacy, unpaid commissions, theft of confidential information and threats to steal customers. It also makes an oblique reference to another issue that always underscores the difficulty of employment litigation: Lawlor's attorneys' fees have approached $1 million.
The case involves the marketing services industry, and the dispute arose right after Lawlor, a successful salesperson, left in 2005. She claimed she was owed accrued commissions, and her employer feared she would steal customers. It also had her followed by a somewhat amateur gumshoe, a fact that would later prove to be damaging to North American.
There was no hint in Sachdev's article that Lawlor was bound by a non-compete contract, so North American was left to pursue common-law remedies. It found potential smoking guns when a North American consutant swore out an affidavit that Lawlor offered to introduce him to a competitor before she quit, and when Lawlor disclosed historical sales and margin data to a competitor on a job interview.
This conduct directly implicated Lawlor's duty of loyalty to her then-employer. That duty prohibits an employee from disclosing confidential information, facilitating a mass exodus of co-workers, and diverting business opportunities away from the employer. Employees must take this duty seriously - a violation can result in salary forfeiture during a period of disloyalty, an injunction against competitive conduct (even in the absence of a non-compete agreement), and punitive damages.
At trial, the parties appeared to split their claims against one another. Lawlor ended up prevailing on her invasion of privacy claim, after North American's overzealous investigators improperly obtained Lawlor's phone records and gave them to the company. North American, on the other hand, was able to obtain some measure of compensation forfeiture, presumbably based on Lawlor's pre-termination activity with existing customers or improper disclosure of North American financial data. Despite relatively low actual damages ($78,781), the trial judge imposed punitive damages of $551,467 - a multiple of seven.
Aside from the enormous fees generated in this case, the litigation serves as a reminder that the absence of a non-compete agreement does not - by any stretch - sanitize an employee's conduct on the way out the door. Breach of the common law duty of loyalty provides for extensive legal and equitable remedies. Proving such a claim can be difficult for an employer, but if the employer is able to marshall evidence of improper pre-termination activity (often learned through a forensic examination of the ex-employee's computer), it may be able to put a halt to anti-competitive conduct and obtain significant monetary relief.
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Court: Circuit Court of Cook County, Chancery Division (Transferred to Law)
Opinion Date: N/A
Cite: Lawlor v. North American Corp. of Illinois, 2005 CH 13876
Favors: N/A
Law: Illinois
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