Rimkus Consulting Group Inc. v. Cammarata - Ballard Spahr LLP

Case 4:07-cv-00405 Document 450 Filed in TXSD on 02/19/10 Page 4 of 139
The defendants’ motion for summary judgment based on claim and issue preclusion
arising from the related, earlier-filed, state-law case are then analyzed in detail. That motion
is denied in part because of the spoliation and withholding of evidence relevant to that case.
Finally, the opinion examines the parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment on the
defendants’ counterclaims for attorneys’ fees.
The opinion results in narrowing and defining the issues to be tried. A pretrial
conference is set for February 26, 2010, at 10:00 a.m. to set a schedule for completing any
remaining pretrial work and a trial date.
I. The Pending Motions
In November 2006, Rimkus Consulting Group, Inc. (“Rimkus”) was sued in Louisiana
state court by Nickie G. Cammarata and Gary Bell, who had just resigned from the Rimkus
office in Louisiana. Cammarata, Bell, and other ex-Rimkus employees had begun a new
company, U.S. Forensic, L.L.C., to compete with Rimkus in offering investigative and
forensic engineering services primarily for insurance disputes and litigation. In the Louisiana
suit, Cammarata and Bell sought a declaratory judgment that the forum-selection, choice-oflaw,
noncompetition, and nonsolicitation provisions in agreements they had signed with
Rimkus were unenforceable. In January and February 2007, Rimkus sued Cammarata and
Bell in separate suits in Texas, alleging that they breached the noncompetition and
nonsolicitation covenants in their written employment agreements and that they used
Rimkus’s trade secrets and proprietary information in setting up and operating U.S. Forensic.
U.S. Forensic is a defendant in the Cammarata case. The Texas Cammarata and Bell cases
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