Price Disclosed By Plaintiff to Customer Without Obligation of Confidentiality Was Not Plaintiff's Trade Secret

Case: Southwest Stainless, LP v. Sappington, 10th Cir. No. 08-5127 (9/21/09)

The One Sentence Summary: The panel affirmed damage and injunction awards in a case to enforce non-compete agreements under Oklahoma law, but reversed a trade secret finding based upon disclosure of a price to a customer without obligations not to disclose the price.


What They Were Fighting About: In an action to enforce non-competition agreements against former employees, there was a verdict for plaintiffs on trade secret and breach of non-competition agreement claims, and an award of damages and injunction under Oklahoma law.

Tenth Circuit Holdings:

• District court did not err in finding that specific sales had been lost and were recoverable as damages, but that all sales of defendant were not proven to be caused by the breach of the non-competition agreement.
  
• Reasonable certainty in damages found where former employee worked on bid for plaintiff before switching to defendant and submitting a lower bid and winning the contract.
  
• Panel affirmed finding that defendants interfered with contractual relationships with employees of plaintiff by hiring them away.
  
• Price which plaintiff disclosed to customer without efforts to stop the customer from sharing the price with defendants could not be a trade secret.