ARTICLE · 11 MAY 2015

Things To Think About Before You Leave To Work For A Competitor

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An employee who leaves a company to work for a competitor can run into a hornet's nest of legal problems.

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William Molinski

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An employee who leaves a company to work for a competitor can run into a hornet's nest of legal problems. The latest example of this classic fact pattern involves William Georgelis, a sales manager for building material manufacturer CPG International LLC. After more than 10 years at the company, Georgelis pursued an opportunity at CPG's competitor Snavely Forest Products. In his job transition, Georgelis did some things that were potentially problematic:

He gave a presentation for Snavely executives showing CPG slides with the CPG logos removed—without CPG's permission.
In the days leading up to the presentation, he accessed a disproportionately large number of accounts from CPG's Salesforce database in regions where CPG and Snavely compete.

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