WTW sues Marsh over poaching 25 employees

Willis Towers Watson (WTW) has filed suit against Marsh in state court in Chicago over the poaching of 25 employees. The employees, primarily Chicago-based members of WTW’s senior living group, left the brokerage to join Marsh in August. As first reported in our sister paper Business Insurance, Marsh has denied WTW’s charges and asked that the case be dismissed. On Monday, Judge Neil H Cohen of Cook County’s chancery division in Chicago denied WTW’s motion for a temporary restraining order and its request for expedited discovery. WTW claims that since 10 September, Marsh and its former employees have wrongfully solicited about 24 of its clients to move their business, resulting in a loss of more than $7.5m in revenue, according to court papers. In the request for the since-denied temporary restraining order (TRO) and preliminary injunction, WTW said they were “needed to stop Marsh and former employee defendants from wrongfully soliciting additional clients”. “Without a TRO and preliminary injunction there is every reason to believe that Marsh and the former employee defendants will continue to unlawfully take additional Willis clients, resulting in millions of dollars in lost annual revenue, and causing Willis significant irreparable harm,” it added. In his brief order denying the TRO and oral motion for expedited discovery, Judge Cohen gave WTW until 4 October to file its opposition to the defendants’ motion to dismiss, and Marsh until 15 October to respond. According to the complaint, six WTW brokers who were producers in Chicago, including executive vice-presidents John Atkinson and Michael Pokora, simultaneously resigned on 5 August and joined Marsh on 23 August, and were subsequently followed by the others. All but two of the employees who left were in WTW’s senior living group, and all but five were based in Chicago. The complaint states: “The former employee defendants who were leaders in the Willis Chicago office violated their fiduciary duties of loyalty and contractual non-solicitation provisions, by approaching their team of employees in Chicago with the plan for them to resign together to go work for Marsh.” It says that the defendants “have been promised more compensation and complete indemnification for this scheme, which includes the violation of their restrictive covenants by soliciting Willis clients”. “Marsh’s participation in this scheme is readily apparent… This was a calculated effort on the part of Marsh to severely harm Willis’s midwest business,” the complaint states. It seeks injunctive relief and charges the former employees and Marsh with violations of the Illinois Uniform Deceptive Trade Practices Act, misappropriation of trade secrets, breach of contract, tortious interference with contractual relations and prospective economic advantage, unfair competition and civil conspiracy. In its rejected bid to obtain a temporary restraining order, WTW asked that the former employees be forbidden from soliciting WTW clients for 24 months and that Marsh be required to divest itself of the 24 clients gained. It also asked for attorneys’ fees and costs. In its response to the complaint and request for dismissal, Marsh said WTW “has substituted facts with boilerplate conclusions that merely parrot the elements of its claims – a practice that Illinois law squarely forbids”. Marsh also said that WTW failed “to identify what trade secrets were misappropriated, when they were misappropriated, how they were misappropriated, by whom they were misappropriated and in what way they were used in defendants’ business”. Spokespeople for Marsh and WTW had no comment. For further news from Business Insurance, please click here.

WTW sues Marsh over poaching 25 employees

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