Dec 28 (Reuters) – U.S. regulation agency Proskauer Rose on Tuesday sued its former main functioning officer, alleging he stole a trove of private information and facts about the firm’s finances, law firm compensation and consumers before leaving his career there this thirty day period.
The lawsuit, submitted in Manhattan federal court docket, statements Jonathan O’Brien deceived Proskauer employees customers into permitting him to duplicate delicate interior files to USB information and then wrongfully deleted thousands of e-mail ahead of offering observe that he was leaving.
“Mr. O’Brien knew this info would be very useful to Proskauer’s opponents, as it would empower them to proficiently target and recruit Proskauer’s companions, observe groups, and shoppers,” the lawsuit explained. The agency requested the court docket to block O’Brien from misusing its info and is trying to get unspecified damages.
O’Brien could not instantly be arrived at for remark. The organization reported it believes he is on holiday in Mauritius.
Proskauer explained it does not know wherever O’Brien options to do the job, but the complaint statements he explained to a fellow personnel that the business would be “very angry” when it realized about his new employer.
O’Brien joined the agency in 2015 as chief money officer and became chief running officer in 2017. A Proskauer spokeswoman did not straight away react to requests for more comment.
In accordance to the complaint, O’Brien in November made a record of documents to steal, like every single partner’s consumer list, money compensation and general performance application the company designed to generate proprietary reviews and private procedures for lateral lover recruiting. He then allegedly tricked a know-how employee into allowing him duplicate the knowledge, expressing it has been asked for by an outside the house expert.
O’Brien then copied the private information on to a USB generate, and on Dec. 16, the day his annual bonus posted, he “deleted each individual file on his own community generate to try out and address up his theft,” in accordance to the complaint.
He knowledgeable the company on Dec. 20 that he was quitting effective Jan. 6. Proskauer’s executive committee voted to hearth him on submitting its lawsuit, the criticism explained.
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Reporting by Karen Sloan
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