Court of Appeals agrees with trial court in denying company's attempt to dismiss claim

A recent case in the U.S. involved claims alleging misappropriation of trade secrets, breach of contract, common law fraud, tortious interference with existing contracts, and tortious interference with prospective business relations against Ernst & Young, LLP (EY) and/or one of its employees.

Ryan, LLC was an accounting and tax consulting firm that developed a severance tax and royalty practice group that helped oil and gas companies realize savings and obtain refunds of state taxes and federal royalties. It provided consulting services to energy sector companies whose financial statements EY, its competitor, audited.

Ryan sued EY and its employee, S.K. Thakkar. It wanted to stop the defendants from seeking, retaining, or using its confidential or proprietary information to conduct audits or to provide severance tax or federal royalty services.

Read more: EY faces stiff penalty for employees cheating on ethics exams

Ryan made the following allegations:

• EY tortiously interfered with Ryan’s prospective business relations for providing federal royalty and severance tax services.
• EY got information about Ryan’s proprietary methods for calculating oil-and-gas-related tax credits when it was auditing some of Ryan’s clients.
• EY made the trade secrets available to nine of its employees in a new federal royalty and severance tax group that competed with Ryan’s.
• Thakkar and at least one other...

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