Judge denies Cargill request in trade secrets case

DENVER – A federal judge has denied an effort by Cargill Inc. to stop a former executive it has accused of stealing trade secrets from working for Greeley-based competitor JBS USA (Bovespa: JBSS3).

U.S. District Judge Raymond Moore denied a motion filed by Cargill attorneys for a temporary restraining order that sought to bar former Cargill Case Ready Canada Vice President Jason Kuan from working for JBS, a subsidiary of Brazilian meatpacker JBS S.A.

The ruling stems from a lawsuit filed by Cargill in August against Kuan in U.S. District Court in Denver. Kuan, formerly of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, once worked as vice president and general manager for Cargill Case Ready Canada. Cargill, a privately held Delaware corporation, operates a meat packing plant in Fort Morgan.

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Cargill alleges that Kuan downloaded hundreds of confidential company files onto an unauthorized external hard drive July 7 before resigning from his job Aug. 1 to lead JBS’ new Case Ready Division. Kuan was first offered a position with JBS in late June and accepted a position as president of JBS Case Ready on July 31.

Cargill had asked that Moore order Kuan to stop working for JBS for a year as well as to forbid the executive from disclosing its trade secrets to JBS.

Moore wrote in his order this week that Kuan returned the documents to Cargill and allowed his laptop to be forensically examined.

“There is also no evidence of any impropriety on the part of JBS,” Moore wrote in the order.

Moore added that Kuan had only generalized information about Cargill’s proprietary information since he returned the documents.

“There is no source, via paper or electronically, from which (Kuan) could obtain or retrieve Cargill’s trade secrets, other than what he can recall,” Moore wrote.

Employed with Cargill since 1994, Kuan had signed confidentiality agreements with Cargill, which has accused him of violating the Colorado Uniform Trade Secrets Act.

Kuan contends he did not steal the documents, but that he would periodically backup documents from his work computer’s hard drive onto an external device due to previous equipment failures, according to court documents filed last week.