A Foley Hoag LLP litigation team has prevailed on an appeal of a multimillion-dollar trial verdict on behalf of its client, BioPoint, Inc. 

In the prelude to this appeal before the First Circuit, the Foley Hoag litigators, led by partner and Labor & Employment practice Co-chair Allison Anderson, won a jury and  bench trial in the federal district court of Massachusetts for BioPoint, a life sciences consulting firm that places expert talent with its pharmaceutical and medical device clients. 

The case involved a scheme by a competing consulting firm, Catapult Solutions, to take BioPoint’s trade secret and confidential information. A senior executive at Catapult was engaged (and later married) to one of BioPoint’s salespeople. Over several years, she funneled sensitive business information to her fiancé to help Catapult build and grow a competing life sciences consulting firm. A federal jury ruled in BioPoint’s favor, after which the district court judge made additional findings of unfair competition. The damages awarded by the jury, combined with the judge’s ruling that Catapult must disgorge wrongly obtained profits, resulted in BioPoint winning over $5 million, and being awarded over $2.5 million in legal fees. Catapult appealed, challenging nearly every aspect of the decision (further details here). 

Anderson argued the appeal to a panel consisting of U.S. Circuit Judges Julia Rikelman, Sandra L. Lynch and Jeffrey R. Howard. On July 30,2024, in an opinion by Judge Lynch, the First Circuit affirmed the judgment and fee award (minus a minor mathematical error), accepting the lower court’s factual findings. 

“This is not only a significant decision for our client, BioPoint, but for the business community at large,” said Anderson. “The First Circuit made clear that misappropriating trade secrets and interference cannot be circumvented by hyper-technicalities, and that disgorgement of 100% of ill-gotten profits is an equitable remedy for those violations. At the end of the day, businesses must deal with one another fairly or ultimately face the consequences, as evidenced here.”

The Foley Hoag team representing BioPoint included Anderson, Jim Bucking, Beth Neitzel, Leah Rizkallah, Rachel Kerner, Marissa Mugan, and Carla Nigro.