A Cook County judge has dismissed a complaint from an immigration law firm alleging its former employees breached a contract and revealed trade secrets — a lawsuit the workers argued was lodged in retaliation for their attempt to unionize.
According to an April 20 opinion from Cook County District Judge Michael Otto, Hudson Institute of Process Research fired Abigail Schultz and Joshua Sturman, then sued. The company, which provides legal consultancy to law firms representing people seeking employment visas, hired Schultz in December 2018 and Sturman in May 2019. Both worked as legal writing specialists, Schultz in Chicago and Sturman in Pittsburgh, and eventually earned promotions, according to court documents.
Central to the lawsuit, according to Otto, are the employees’ confidentiality and non-compete agreements, as well as discussions in the spring of 2020 among Hudson employees regarding potentially joining a union. Sturman contacted the United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America, then helped found a Hudson organizing committee. Schultz became an organizer that June, and in July 2021 Sturman sent a National Labor Relations Board voluntary recognition petition to Hudson’s president.
The company alleged the workers created a Twitter account called Hudson Workers United, which stated “nearly every employee who was given an affidavit or testimony to the NLRB has now been fired in retaliation.” It further alleged the workers downloaded more than 800 documents from company servers and gave some of that information to Sturman’s attorney.
On Oct. 19, 2021, the company placed both workers on administrative leave for allegedly downloading documents, then formalized their termination Oct. 29. Both remained active with unionization efforts, and filed unfair labor practices with the NLRB, which in July 2022 ruled Hudson employees elected to unionize and could bargain under United Electric. The lawsuit followed five days later.
The workers sought dismissal under the Illinois Citizen Participation Act, arguing Hudson’s complaint qualified as what is defined as a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, or SLAPP. Otto said the workers “were engaged in acts of furtherance of the right to petition, speak, associate or otherwise participate in government by promoting unionization efforts,” and although Hudson alleged their efforts weren’t genuinely intended to procure favorable government action, the company “cites no authority and provides no explanation for that argument.”
Hudson alleged the workers breached their confidentiality agreement with the company, but Otto agreed with the workers’ position those agreements are overly broad and should be considered void. Because the agreements addressed “all information acquired through” their employment, Otto wrote, the documents “went far beyond any legitimate protectable interest of Hudson.”
The workers further agued they didn’t violate the Illinois Trade Secrets Act. Under that law, Otto explained, Hudson could only press its allegations of improper downloading, as the ITSA doesn’t cover “intent to disclose” violations or the alleged disclosure to Sturman’s then-attorney.
Because the workers had permission to download the documents through the course of their employment, and because Hudson never argued the workers lacked a reason to download or that they improperly kept the files, “there is no contention — beyond conclusory allegations — that the downloading was outside the realm of what was permitted,” Otto wrote.
Turning to allegations under its non-compete agreements, Otto explained the statements Hudson used to frame it’s allegations were subjective opinion and therefore couldn’t survive a motion to dismiss. Otto said Michigan law applies to both defendants because of choice of law provisions in the contested agreement, and further wrote that under that state’s statute “defamatory statements must be facts that can be proven verifiably false.”
Some of the statements, such that Hudson used “questionable business practices of business tyrants” or pledges to expose “what is really going on inside the leading immigration law firm” were clearly subjective, Otto wrote, and although Hudson haggled over the accuracy of the tweet asserting retaliatory firing of “nearly every employee,” Otto said the workers believe the four of eight such fired employees to have been dismissed as retaliation, sufficient to constitute opinion.
Finally, Otto wrote, the challenged statements didn’t concern the quality of the firm’s services or goods, which is essential to establish a claim of commercial disparagement. He said Hudson “cites no authority” for its suggestion statements about how it treats workers fall under the commercial disparagement umbrella and agreed to dismiss those counts as well.
Otto granted the full dismissal with prejudice and preserved an April 26 status date for the workers to present their counterclaim.