Federal judge dismisses Westinghouse’s trade secret theft lawsuit
A federal lawsuit Westinghouse Electric Company filed against a former Belgium-based vice president claiming he stole secret, proprietary company information before his employment with the company was terminated December 2019 has been settled.
A confidential consent settlement between the Cranberry Township-based Westinghouse and former vice president Michael Kirst was signed in January by U.S. District Judge Christy Wiegand in Pittsburgh. Wiegand dismissed the suit with prejudice, meaning the company can't refile the suit.
Kirst and Westinghouse made certain acknowledgments in the settlement, which they submitted to the court Jan. 9. It was signed by Wiegand on Jan. 19. Westinghouse withdrew the suit, and Wiegand signed a consent judgment in favor of Kirst.
Kirst acknowledged that, with the knowledge and advice of internet technology staff at Westinghouse, he sent emails from his Westinghouse account to a personal account because he was having problems with his printer.
Westinghouse acknowledged that Kirst did not share confidential business information about Westinghouse in the emails he sent to his personal email account.
That admission contrasts with accusations the company made against him in the lawsuit filed in October 2021.
Kirst began working for Westinghouse in the U.S. in 1996. In 2005, the company temporarily assigned him to work in Sweden and then shifted him to Brussels on a temporary expatriate assignment.
The company said in the suit that it ended the assignment and instructed Kirst to return to the U.S. in October 2019, but he said he wanted to stay in Brussels.
“Anticipating that his refusal to return to the United States would ultimately result in his separation from his employment, Kirst misappropriated Westinghouse’s confidential information. Specifically, he used his company devices to forwarded crucial strategic initiatives, global market trend analyses, and competitor updates from his corporate account to his personal account,” the suit alleged.
“These highly confidential emails contained extraordinarily sensitive Westinghouse strategic commercial information regarding potential new business,” according to the suit.
The company alleged Kirst misappropriated trade secrets in violation of the Federal Defend Trade Secrets Act, violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, breached a confidentiality agreement, breached common law fiduciary duty and duty of loyalty, violated the Pennsylvania Uniform Trade Secrets Act, and breached a clause of his expatriate agreement.
In his response to the suit, Kirst said some of the allegations had been raised in Belgian court, which ruled in his favor and awarded him compensation for his employment separation from the company.
He denied the claims regarding trade secrets, saying he stole no trade secrets, did not misappropriate or convert any confidential information, did not improperly access any computer network and many, if not all, of the documents in question are not trade secrets or confidential and were intended to be shared with third parties.
Kirst said he forwarded the documents to his personal email to print them because he was having computer problems, which Westinghouse was made aware of in 2019, two years before the complaint was filed.
