Comercia Inc. said Monday it won a court order preventing 24 former employees who were hired by Irvine-based Commercial Capital Bancorp from using, destroying or disclosing trade secrets in their current jobs.
Comerica initially won a temporary restraining order in August stopping those who jumped to Commercial Capital from destroying or concealing confidential information allegedly taken from the El Segundo office of the Detroit-based bank.
Today Comerica won a “preliminary injunction,” meaning that the temporary order will stay in effect until allegations outlined in the suit are argued in California Superior Court in San Francisco.
Comerica filed a lawsuit in San Francisco in late July, shortly after Commercial Capital hired a group of bankers from Comerica’s El Segundo operation.
The workers rejoined their former boss who earlier bolted to start up a new financial services unit at Commercial Capital.
The Comerica suit named 24 people, including James R. Daley, the former Comerica executive who ran the bank’s financial services division in El Segundo. Daley was hired by Commercial Capital in early July to launch a similar business unit for the Irvine thrift.
In its lawsuit, Comerica charges a conspiracy among former Comerica executives who allegedly engaged in an “unlawful and unethical campaign to deliberately disrupt” Comerica’s business through misusing Comerica’s trade secrets and confidential employee and customer information.
Commercial Capital said it plans to fight the lawsuit.
The injunction issued Monday blocks the former Comerica employees from disclosing trade secrets and financial dealings to current or potential Comerica customers who appear on lists kept by the bank prior to the group’s departure.
The injunction also orders the employees to “return the proprietary documents and information that they had taken from Comerica.”
The bankers came from what Comerica calls its financial services division, which manages roughly $8 billion of the bank’s $40 billion in deposits. The bankers provided escrow, deposit and credit services to Comerica’s title insurance and escrow clients. They also provided wire transfers, Treasury bond investing and other services.
Escrow services make up the bulk of the work in Comerica’s financial services division. Comerica has contracts with title companies to make short-term investments of escrowed funds on homes that are in the process of being bought.
