DePuy Synthes, the orthopedics arm of Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ), sued rival Globus Medical (NYSE:GMED) and 3 ex-DePuy sales reps now working for Globus, accusing them of breaching their contracts with their defections.
It’s the latest lawsuit filed by DePuy Synthes against ex-sales reps who’ve quit to work for either a Globus distributor, for Globus directly or for another competitor. The 3 reps covered territories in Texas for DePuy Synthes, according to the lawsuit.
It alleges that Globus hired Jared Bunn, Aaron Garza and Jason Glynn despite knowing that they were subject to confidentiality and non-competition clauses in their employment contracts with DePuy, according to court documents. Bunn and Garza quit DePuy in September 2012, according to the documents; Glynn resigned in March 2013, roughly 2 weeks after his supervisor as DePuy, Jody Stevenson, quit to join Globus.
"Globus intentionally recruited the individual defendants as a team in an effort to rapidly build its own business, not by competing through its products, services, and pricing, but instead by appropriating and capitalizing on the goodwill, customer relationships, and confidential information that DePuy Synthes necessarily entrusts to its sales employees," according to the lawsuit. "By virtue of Globus’s recruiting and hiring, around the same time, of several DePuy Synthes sales employees with responsibility for overlapping or geographically adjacent territories, the former DePuy Synthes sales employees are able to use their collective efforts and assistance to each other in soliciting sales from DePuy Synthes customers while claiming not to violate their individual non-compete agreements with DePuy Synthes . Globus has continued to recruit additional sales employees of DePuy Synthes with the intention of building its business based on the goodwill, customer relationships, and confidential information of DePuy Synthes."
In July, DePuy filed a breach of contract lawsuit against a pair of former sales reps who jumped ship for Sky Surgical, a Globus distributor. Last month DePuy leveled charges against 2 more former employees who quit to work for Peerless Surgical.
