Guy Carpenter suing former employees & Howden over personnel 'raid'

Gibson, Dunn, & Crutcher, a global law firm that ranks #15 on ALM’s Global 200 list, has been called to back reinsurance broker Guy Carpenter & Co. in two recently filed lawsuits over the defection of its CG Access unit to Howden Reinsurance Brokers. The two suits were brought in Texas and in New York.

In the Southern District of New York, Guy Carpenter has sued five former employees of its GC Access unit for breach of contract and fiduciary duties, misappropriation of trade secrets, unfair competition and tortious interference with business relationships. The suit, backed by Gibson Dunn, centers on the employees’ defection to Howden Reinsurance Brokers in alleged breach of various non-solicitation and non-disclosure agreements.

Guy Carpenter has separately sued Howden, which it describes as a direct competitor, in the Northern District of Texas, in a trade secret lawsuit also filed by Gibson Dunn. That complaint pursues claims against Howden Reinsurance Brokers for violation of trade secrets laws and other business torts in connection with the defendants hiring of 12 employees of the plaintiff’s GC Access unit. According to the filing, Howden orchestrated the simultaneous defection of the unit’s top leadership along with over 20 accounts worth millions of dollars in annual revenue.

Counsel have not appeared for individual defendants yet in either case.

According to the SDNY suit: “After many months of planning, the raid of the GC Access unit was revealed on April 25, 2022. That morning, Defendants, along with seven other GC Access employees and Howden’s senior executives, gathered in a private room at the Mansion on Turtle Creek, a highend hotel and restaurant in Dallas. At this meeting, Defendants worked together with Howden’s senior executives to make their final push to encourage and assist the GC Access employees to resign from Guy Carpenter and join Howden. Once they were in agreement to do so, Defendants and the seven other GC Access employees drafted resignation emails to Guy Carpenter, which each of them tendered near-simultaneously to Guy Carpenter. Later that day, this same group met to celebrate the raid of the GC Access unit at Au Troiséme, a Dallas restaurant that had not yet opened to the public, and in which Defendant Michael Jameson was an investor. This carefully calculated raid, with the cherry-picking of more than half of the GC Access team and utilizing confidential details about their employment with Guy Carpenter to entice them to leave, constituted a clear violation of the fiduciary duties and contractual obligations Defendants owed to Guy Carpenter.”

Insurance Coverage Law Center editor’s note: Misappropriation of trade secrets, unfair competition and tortious interference with business relationships is a big deal in the insurance industry. Employees will likely have fiduciary duties and contractual obligations to their employer.

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