Judge dismisses Home Water Solutions case
LOVELAND — A lawsuit that alleged theft of products, trade secrets and disloyalty by employees who formed their own company that competed against Loveland company Home Water Solutions has been dismissed with prejudice, meaning that the court’s decision is final.
The lawsuit claimed that former employees Lanney Ogletree, Joseph Deeb, Elizabeth Berry-Ogletree and several others formed their own company, Purewater Plumbing and Water Purification LLC, to compete against Home Water while they still were employees. Some of the defendants were fired and others resigned.
The original lawsuit was filed in February 2022. After 151 motions, counterclaims and court orders, along with mediation, Judge Juan Villasenor determined that Home Water, 4204 N. Garfield Ave., had not proved its case and that the defendants were entitled to a dismissal of the case.
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Home Waters claimed that the defendants committed theft by misappropriation of certain commercial products and by stealing customer records. The judge determined, however, that no evidence was presented to warrant a claim of theft of commercial products and that the company failed to protect customer records because it shared them freely with employees using their personal email accounts. No evidence was presented to indicate that the defendants took advantage of that customer information. Both Home Water and Purewater, 6778 N. Franklin Ave. in Loveland, used Angi, the customer referral network that sometimes supplied the same lead to both companies.
Home Water also claimed breach of contract (the employee manual), but the court determined that no contract existed and that evidence presented to support the breach worked against Home Water because the employee manual stated that it was not to be considered a contract.
The manual did permit employees to work outside of the company as long as they met their performance responsibilities at Home Water, which the court said permitted the defendants to form their own company.
The judge used similar reasoning in denying Home Water’s motion for summary judgment.
Lanney Ogletree, when contacted by BizWest, said that from the start “the whole thing was false. We didn’t do any of that. In this country, you can sue whoever you want and force people to pay legal fees.
“We knew everything was just junk. but it took almost two years,” he said.
Donovan Adfield, the founder of Home Water Solutions, which uses the trade name Home Service Solutions, did not respond by publication time to a request for comment.
The case is Home Water Solutions LLC v. Lanney Ogletree, Joseph Patrick Deeb, Elizabeth Amy Berry-Ogletree, Alexander Golden, William Gieseler, Landon McGill, Sara Morales James, Purewater Plumbing and Water Purification LLC and Bandit H2O Heaters LLC, case number 2022cv30118, which is filed in Larimer County District Court.
