The fallout has started over Irvine-based Commercial Capital Bancorp Inc.’s hiring of a Comerica Inc. real estate services team.
Comerica won a temporary restraining order last week, 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.
Comerica filed a lawsuit in California Superior Court in San Francisco shortly after Commercial Capital said in late July that it had hired a group of bankers from Comerica’s El Segundo operation.
The workers rejoined their former boss who earlier bolted to start up Commercial Capital’s newly formed commercial banking division.
The Comerica suit filed on July 29 names 24 defendants, including James R. Daley, a 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 thrift.
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, according to the suit.
The temporary restraining order issued last week blocks the former Comerica employees from disclosing trade secrets and financial dealings to current or potential Comerica customers that appear on lists kept by the bank prior to the group’s departure on July 22.
The order also stops the employees from destroying or tampering with e-mail, data, paper records and information that Comerica uses to analyze customer pricing and credit models.
The judge didn’t weigh in on the legality of the hirings.
Commercial Capital said in a release Monday it plans to “vigorously defend” itself against the lawsuit and the temporary restraining order.
For more on this story, see the August 8 edition of the Business Journal.
