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https://www.workcompcentral.com/news/print/id/9c84087b1212fcdeca6e0d3b7c07050f3a7a28f1[10/20/2015 4:33:29 PM]

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State: Fla.Lawsuit Accuses Consultant of Stealing Trade Secrets: Top [2015-10-20]

A Florida company was expecting to soon unveil a new product, a system for injured workers to manage their Medicare Set Aside payments in workers’ compensation cases.

But now the product, known as The MSA Card, is on hold after a third-party technology developer allegedly stole the company’s trade secrets. The MSA Card has filed a lawsuit in the 9th Judicial Circuit Court in Orange County, Florida, to get its confidential information back.

Named in the lawsuit are Chiefs Consulting Group LLC of Winter Park, Florida, and its Chief Innovation Officer Kerry Augustine, as well as software developer Adriano Silva. The lawsuit was filed in August.

The MSA Card has been in development for 10 years, according to Andrew Bonner, a strategic consultant to the company. Chief Executive Officer Robert Barson said the product would help Medicare set-aside recipients comply with restrictions for using the funds.

But in June, The MSA Card discovered that something was wrong. According to the lawsuit, the company’s confidential information had been moved from its own secure servers and networks to cloud-based storage controlled by Silva and Chiefs Consulting. The lawsuit alleges that the transfer was an intentional effort to block the company’s access to its own information.

“Chiefs Consulting … had every intention to steal and misappropriate that confidential information and trade secrets for its own use, benefit, profit, commercial gain and commercial enterprise,” the lawsuit stated.

Material that was allegedly taken includes software codes, developer notes and instruction material, information that the lawsuit values at $25 million.

The MSA Card has demanded a return of its confidential information, but the defendants have allegedly refused. Now, Chiefs Consulting has allegedly demanded that The MSA Card pay for a license to access the information.

Silva couldn’t be reached for comment. His attorney, David Popper, didn’t respond to a message seeking comment.

Augustine referred a request for comment to his attorney, Tim Schulte. Schulte’s office staff said he is out of the office this week, and he could not be reached for comment. A response to the lawsuit is pending, Bonner said.

Barson said he wanted to call attention to the situation as a “cautionary tale” to others. Those in the risk-management business need to think through due diligence for their own business, Bonner said.

According to the lawsuit, Chiefs Consulting and The MSA Card entered into a mutual confidentiality and nondisclosure agreement on Sept. 24, 2013. The agreement prohibited the disclosure of any confidential information to outside parties with previous written consent, the lawsuit said.

The MSA Card also gave Chiefs Consulting a confidentiality agreement for any of its subcontractors working on the project to sign, according to the lawsuit. Silva allegedly signed such an agreement in August 2014.

However, three months earlier, Chiefs Consulting allegedly had Silva sign an independent contractor agreement that said any and all proprietary information that he’d have access to during the MSA project belonged to Chiefs Consulting.

Workers Compensation News | WorkCompCentral | - Workers Compensation Industry News, Tools, Education and Training

https://www.workcompcentral.com/news/print/id/9c84087b1212fcdeca6e0d3b7c07050f3a7a28f1[10/20/2015 4:33:29 PM]

“Inconceivably, (the agreement) rendered all of The MSA Card’s confidential information provided to Silva during the course of his work on the MSA project as the property of Chiefs Consulting,” as well as Silva’s work, the lawsuit stated.