On February 6, I had the pleasure of giving the 2019 Trade Secrets Year in Review at TexasBarCLE‘s annual Advanced Intellectual Property Law seminar.
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Dallas Court of Appeals Affirms Denial of TCPA Motion in Trade Secrets Case
Pearl Energy Inv. Mgmt., LLC v. Gravitas Res. Corp., No. 05-18-01012-CV, 2019 WL 3729501 (Tex. App.—Dallas Aug. 7, 2019, no pet.) is a trade secrets case involving the previous version of Texas’s anti-SLAPP statute the Texas Citizens Participation Act (TCPA). (Effective September 1, 2019, the TCPA no longer applies to trade secrets claims.) In Pearl Energy, Gravitas, an oil and gas production company, alleged that it spent years researching and evaluating the purchase of certain natural gas assets in Utah from Anadarko. In 2016, Gravitas approached Anadarko about purchasing the assets. Gravitas eventually won the bid for the assets and began negotiating a purchase and sale agreement for the assets.
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Dallas Court of Appeals Explores the TCPA in Complex New Decision
Through most of 2019, the Dallas Court of Appeals has refused to apply the Texas Citizens Participation Act (TCPA) to commercial litigation claims. Goldberg v. EMR (USA Holdings) Inc., No. 05-18-00261-CV, 2019 WL 3955771 (Tex. App.–Dallas Aug. 22, 2019, no pet. h.) reverses that trend in part. Goldberg is too complex of a case to summarize here. Therefore, I’ll just hit the highlights:
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Austin Court of Appeals Issues Opinion on the TCPA and Conspiracy
Most cases that have evaluated the Texas Citizens Participation Act (TCPA) have focused on whether the TCPA applied to the claims. This isn’t the issue in Neurodiagnostic Consultants, LLC v. v. Nallia, No. 03-18-00609-CV, 2019 WL 4231232 (Tex. App.—Austin Sept. 6, 2019, no pet. h.). Instead, Nalia focuses on whether the non-movant offered sufficient proof to defeat a TCPA motion to dismiss.
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Another Trade Secret Case Involving the TCPA
Over the past several months, I’ve been tracking the explosion of cases where a defendant uses Texas’s anti-SLAAP statute the Texas Citizens Participation Act (TCPA) as a defense to a misappropriation of trade secrets claim under the Texas Uniform Trade Secrets Act (TUTSA). The Beaumont Court of Appeals case in Callison v. C&C Pers., LLC, No. 09-19-00014-CV, 2019 WL 3022548(Tex. App.–Beaumont July 11, 2019, no pet. h.) is another one of those cases. Callison involves the familiar fact pattern of an employee accused of acquiring her former employee’s trade secrets and then using those trade secrets to solicit her former customers. In defense to those claims, the employee filed a motion to dismiss under the TCPA. The trial court denied employee’s motion by operation of law. The Beaumont Court of Appeals affirmed.
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Dallas Court of Appeal Continues Trend Restricting Application of the TCPA to Commercial Litigation Cases
The Dallas Court of Appeals opinion in Damonte v. Hallmark Financial Services, Inc., No. 05-18-00874-CV, 2019 WL 3059884 (Tex. App.–Dallas July 12, 2019) is the latest in a string of cases restricting the application of the Texas’s anti-SLAAP statute the Texas Citizens Participation Act (TCPA). In this case, Hallmark sued Damonte, its former employee, for breach of fiduciary duty, breach of contract, and violations of the Texas Uniform Trade Secret Act (TUTSA) after employees were found to be emailing themselves proprietary information in the weeks immediately before his departure. In response, Damonte filed a motion to dismiss under the TCPA, alleging that Hallmark’s lawsuit was based on, relates to, or in response to his rights of free speech and association.
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Dallas Court of Appeals Issues Opinion Interpreting the Commercial Speech Exception of the TCPA
As previously discussed, the current version of the Texas Citizens Participation Act (TCPA) can apply in a variety of commercial litigation cases. One of the exceptions to application of the TCPA, though, is the commercial speech exemption. Under the commercial speech exemption, the TCPA does not apply if (1) the defendant was primarily engaged in the business of selling or leasing goods, (2) the defendant made the statement or engaged in the conduct on which the claim is based in the defendant’s capacity as a seller or lessor of those goods or services, (3) the statement or conduct at issue arose out of a commercial transaction involving the kind of good or services the defendant provides, and (4) the intended audience of the statement or conduct were actual or potential customers of the defendant for the kind of goods or services the defendant provides.
The new Dallas Court of Appeals case of Clean Energy and Clean Energy Fuels Corp. v. Trillium Transportation Fuels, LLC, No. 05-18-01228, (Tex. App.—Dallas July 9, 2019, no pet. h.) interprets the third prong of this exemption.
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Texas Tech Law Professor Co-Authors New Article on Amendments to the TCPA
Texas Tech School of Law professor and my former colleague at Brackett & Ellis Rob Sherwin co-wrote a new law review article with Haynes and Boone attorney Laura Lee Prather. The article discusses the Texas Citizens Participation Act (TCPA) and the changes to the TCPA that went into effect on September 1, 2019.
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Dallas Court of Appeals Follows Fort Worth Court’s Lead in Restricting the Scope of the TCPA
In one of my previous posts, I mentioned how the Fort Worth Court of Appeals restricted the scope of Texas’s anti-SLAAP statute the Texas Citizens Participation Act (TCPA) by determining that the “common interest” in the definition of “right of association” under the TCPA requires interests that are “shared by the public or at least a group.” This is a holding that arguably conflicts with other courts of appeals that have held that the “right of association” is implicated in situations where alleged tortfeasors are working together to further a competing business or other interest “common” to the tortfeasors.
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Dallas Court of Appeals Denies Application of the TCPA to a Commercial Litigation Case
As discussed in previous posts, multiple Texas cases have held that Texas’s anti-SLAAP statute the Texas Citizens Participation Act (TCPA) applies in most commercial litigation cases. In a recent string of decisions, though, the Dallas Court of Appeals is attempting to restrict the application of the TCPA to commercial litigation cases.
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