Tampa Bay Fisheries has disputed National Fish & Seafood’s action to include Red Chamber as a defendant in the ongoing trade secrets court case involving the two major United States seafood suppliers.
Vernon, California, U.S.A.-based Red Chamber attempted to buy National Fish and Seafood last year, NFS President Todd Provost told SeafoodSource.
Red Chamber entered into a confidentiality agreement with Gloucester, Massachusetts-based NFS in October 2017 “in relation to Red Chamber’s interest in evaluating NFS’ business," according to documents filed in the ongoing litigation between NFS and Red Chamber subsidiary Tampa Bay Fisheries. That litigation stems from allegations that former NFS employee Kathleen Scanlon attempted to steal trade secrets after she was hired by the latter company.
According to the recent filing, Tampa Bay’s recruitment of Scanlon represented a breach of the non-disclosure agreement signed between Red Chamber and NFS.
In its new opposition to NFS’s amended complaint – which names Red Chamber as a defendant in addition to Tampa Bay, Scanlon, Tampa Bay CEO Robert Paterson, Tampa Bay executive Mike Marsh, and others – Tampa Bay said that the judge should deny NFS’s request.
“National Fish seeks to amend its complaint yet again, to add a party six weeks before trial, citing a contract it has held since 2017. The relevant conduct, too, has long been known to NFS,” Adam Gershenson, an attorney for Tampa Bay stated in the court document.
NFS alleges that it needed notice before Tampa Bay hired Scanlon, “even though Ms. Scanlon herself notified NFS prior to her departure,” Gershenson said. In addition, Scanlon’s hiring was not barred under the contract and “there are no plausible damages stemming from a hire that the agreement itself permits,” Gershenson wrote.
“On that flimsy basis, when the parties should be focusing the issues for trial, Plaintiff seeks to widen the scope of the dispute by dragging in Red Chamber, merely because the companies share common owners, and apparently as retribution for Red Chamber’s lawful and reasonable decision not to buy the floundering NFS,” he added.
Tampa Bay believes that NFS is attempting to bring in Red Chamber as a defendant because it is “fearful that its ‘trade secret’ claim against Tampa Bay stands unsupported [and] has sought to ensure that it inflicts pain on defendants anyway,” Gershenson wrote.
If Red Chamber is included, it would impose needless litigation costs and “reward NFS for laying in the weeds with a claim on a contract that NFS possessed before this case ever started,” Gershenson said. Tampa Bay has worked diligently to meet court-ordered deadlines “in order to clear its name in this matter and would be prejudiced by last minute claims or a new schedule,” Gershenson added.
In an email to SeafoodSource, NFS President Todd Provost disputed Tampa Bay’s assertion that the lawsuit stands unsupported.
"It is undisputed that Ms. Scanlon copied a vast amount of NFS confidential business information, and that she did so with assistance from Tampa Bay, after accepting an offer to serve as Vice President of Tampa Bay, and prior to providing notice to NFS of her resignation," Provost said. "It seems very hard to believe that these actions were innocent and that Ms. Scanlon acted alone and without the encouragement of and assistance from the other Defendants."
