Ryan Erickson and Erin Reding led a team that recently secured a $3.5 million settlement on behalf of a survivor of childhood sexual abuse in a case against a defendant school district.
In addition to its thriving corporate ligation practice, Lewis & Llewellyn is dedicated to representing survivors of sexual abuse in civil actions against perpetrators of abuse and institutions that enable it. We are honored to be able to deploy our business litigation skills upon this incredibly worthy cause.
Lewis & Llewellyn recently secured a $25.7 million jury verdict in a trade secret theft lawsuit in the Northern District of California, working alongside attorneys from Councill, Gunnemann & Chally. Congratulations to the trial team, Evangeline Burbidge, Zachary Flood, Jonathan Chally, Josh Gunnemann, and Jennifer Virostko, and to our incredible client EchoSpan.
EchoSpan is the creator of a web-based platform that allows companies to conduct complex 360-degree employee reviews.
During the six-day trial, EchoSpan presented evidence that Medallia signed up for a free trial of the EchoSpan product under false pretenses—claiming to be accessing the software to evaluate whether to purchase 5,000 licenses for Medallia’s internal use when, instead, Medallia employees took extensive notes on and screenshots of the product, using it to create a copycat tool. Medallia, in turn, defended these actions, arguing “no harm, no foul” and asserting that it developed the product on its own.
The jury sided with EchoSpan, finding that Medallia had willfully misappropriated the “heart” of EchoSpan’s product and awarding $11.7 million in compensatory damages and $14 million in exemplary damages to the company.
“It was powerful and humbling to watch the jury—regular members of the community—hold a $6.4 billion dollar company accountable when no one else could,” said partner Evangeline Burbidge. “CEO Joe Vance did the hard thing and stood up to a much bigger company. He and EchoSpan can walk tall after this verdict.”
To date, Lewis & Llewellyn’s clients have been awarded over $100 million. Congratulations to our team.
We are pleased to report another landmark win for a Lewis & Llewellyn client. As reported in Law360 and the Daily Journal, following a two week arbitration and years of litigation, Lewis & Llewellyn client EDAG Engineering was awarded $30 million against electric vehicle startup Byton, after a payment dispute arose from their combined efforts to build an all-electric luxury SUV called the M-Byte. In reaching this decision, the JAMS sole arbitrator, former San Francisco County Superior Court Judge William J. Cahill, found that Byton had breached its contract with EDAG. Judge Cahill also rejected Byton’s $31 million counterclaim against EDAG. Judge Chen of the Northern District of California confirmed the award, which included $28,635,392.42, plus over $1.5M in costs and interests.
When interviewed by Law360, partner Evangeline Burbidge said, “This is absolutely the right outcome. Our client did their job, providing world-class service in the face of novel engineering challenges. We were please to help them receive every penny they had earned, with interest.” A copy of the article is available here.
The Lewis & Llewellyn team consisted of lead counsel Burbidge, supported by Brad Estes, Marc Lewis, Ken Walczak, and Kristin Orrantia.
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