No one knows better than trial lawyers and judges that “there are two sides to every story” (at least two sides, actually). But, as with all adages, this adage is just wrong in some cases.
The latest “brain raid” case of Virtual Radiologic (“vRad”) v. Rabern is looking pretty one-sided at the moment.
According to vRad, Mr. Rabern, a vRad salesperson, lined up a job at Nines, which he characterized to vRad as not being in competition with vRad. Mr. Rabern secured a “conditional amendment” to his non-compete to work with Nines. Then he allegedly emailed himself vRad confidential and proprietary information. There is some hint that he might not have been altogether forthcoming with his (or Nines’) lawyers. (See here at p. 10 (“the attorney explained that…Rabern had told [his attorney] the only documents he emailed to himself from his vRad laptop were family pictures. [Then] vRad’s counsel shared redacted copies of the images that Rabern had emailed to himself—images that were obviously not family pictures…”).
At the time that Mr. Rabern left vRad for Nines, Nines was allegedly on the threshold of entering into direct competition with vRad and Mr. Rabern is alleged to have misappropriated vRad confidential information and solicited vRad employees to join him at Nines (in direct violation of his “conditionally amended” non-compete with vRad).
vRad lawyers paint a pretty damning and grim picture. We look forward to following the case so see whether this might be one of those rare cases where there are really two sides of the story.