When a federal jury in Houston hit KBR with a $71 million verdict in a trade secrets case involving processes used to manufacture polycarbonate, the engineering and construction firm’s senior counsel Kriste Sullivan didn’t flinch.
She knew the plaintiffs had taken a big gamble. And she knew she had an ace in the hole. But it wasn’t just the luck of the draw that resulted in KBR eventually completely pouring out Trinseo’s $360 million trade secrets case.
Sullivan’s legal colleague at KBR, Bryan Blades, said while her work on the Trinseo case probably is her “biggest success” at the company, it also came as no surprise.
“Kriste rarely finds herself on the losing side of a matter,” he said. “The amounts in controversy were substantial enough that they could be considered ‘bet the business unit’ litigation. At the end of the day, the plaintiffs remarkably took nothing.”
“It was a big win. She also was instrumental in having the costs picked up by our insurer, who fought this point at times.”
As soon as Sullivan received a pre-suit letter indicating litigation could be coming, she set to work assembling her outside counsel team, tapping Geoffrey Harrison of Susman Godfrey and Warren Harris of Bracewell to defend against the claim.
“These attorneys are brilliant, and their respective expertise is unmatched, in my opinion,” she said, noting KBR has a long, successful history of winning trials and appeals when partnering with both firms. “They create a strong sense of unity with their respective clients. We are all-in for the win.”
“I respect the leadership that Geoff and Warren provide as they cultivate a team. Assembling the right team of attorneys, and empowering them to get the job done, is a gift. I could not be more grateful to them both for their generous time, expertise and meticulous attention to detail. It is obvious that both Geoff and Warren love what they do.”
By the time KBR was sued in September 2021, Sullivan was ready for battle.
Citing that win, the Association of Corporate Counsel’s Houston Chapter and The Texas Lawbook have honored Sullivan, KBR and the lawyers at Susman Godfrey and Bracewell for the 2026 Houston Corporate Counsel Award for Business Litigation of the Year.
Sullivan’s Path to the Law
A true Houstonian, Sullivan was born and raised in the city, the daughter of a real estate lawyer and an interior designer. Seeing her father, Leo Kissner, practice law had an impact on Sullivan, as well as her brother, Todd Kissner, who works as a lawyer for Exxon. And she met her husband, John Sullivan, while they were attending law school at the University of Houston.
While it may have seemed inevitable, Sullivan said it wasn’t until she went to college at the University of Texas at Austin that she knew for certain she would also pursue a career in the law.
“At that point, I probably wanted to be like my dad, and still do,” she said.
She earned her law degree in 1988 and started her career at Haynes Boone that September, practicing commercial litigation. She had her first child in late 1991, and the travel required of a litigator became unsustainable.
An in-house position became an attractive option.
So, in April 1992, she joined Enron Corporation as an assistant general counsel in its corporate legal department. And life marched on, as she and John eventually became parents to five children.
She stayed at Enron for 12 years, until the very end.
“It was a wild ride, from the rise to the fall and after,” she said. “Despite how the ride ended, the journey was amazing. I met so many bright people and had the opportunity to work with excellent inside and outside counsel. At the time, I thought that I would ride out my career at Enron Corp. Life lesson number one and two: The one thing that is constant is change, and what goes up must come down.”
She stayed with the company until January 2004, about two years after the bankruptcy filing.
“Those final years were tough and sad but provided me with a unique experience of walking with a corporation through bankruptcy,” she said. “The fall was fast and hard. I did not see it coming. I hope to never need that experience, but I learned so much.”
After that, she moved to Littler Mendelson for about a year and a half before taking an 11-year break to focus on raising her children. By 2018, Sullivan’s youngest child was old enough to drive, the others were “in college and beyond,” and she found she “had capacity in my life to work again.”
That year, after working as a part-time consultant for the company the year prior, she joined KBR fulltime.
“KBR has been a blessing to me,” she said. “I joined KBR at a time when the company was evolving into a new company. Specifically, a company that focused on technology, engineering, space and government services. It has been fascinating to be a part of this successful and creative evolution.”
She is one of two litigators working inhouse for KBR, managing all the litigation — intellectual property, personal injury, wrongful death, product liability, commercial contract dispute, toxic tort, tax cases and “whatever else walks in the door” — for the firm and its affiliates worldwide.
“While I primarily live on the defense side of the track, from time to time I cross over and get to be the plaintiff,” she said. “I love it all.”
The scope of her work cannot be understated. Harris noted Sullivan is tapped to guide KBR “through its most challenging commercial disputes.”
“Her practice has taken her across the globe, supporting matters throughout Europe and Australia,” he said.
And 2025 brought more than just the Trinseo win. She and her team also saw successful resolution of a high-stakes tax case in Louisiana they had worked on for three years.
“As in-house counsel, my job when representing the company is to manage a dispute such that KBR is not drawn into litigation,” Sullivan said. “Those results are not seen in the numbers but they are my biggest contribution to the company.”
The Trial
In preparing for trial, Sullivan was the primary liaison between KBR and outside counsel, a role she continued to fill through the appeals process. Harris cited her “key strategic role” in the case, “advising on trial litigation strategy, arguments to pursue on appeal and the company’s overall approach to the case.”
“She attended the entire trial and the appellate moot court sessions and oral argument and was responsible for ensuring that KBR’s internal leadership remained informed and aligned on the case’s legal and business implications,” he said. “Her leadership helped secure a complete win, setting aside the jury’s damages awards in their entirety and contributed to a significant appellate ruling that is likely to influence how damages are presented in trade secret litigation nationwide.”
Trinseo filed its lawsuit against KBR on Jan. 11, 2022. The suit alleged KBR had misappropriated 10 Trinseo trade secrets related to the production of polycarbonate.
About a year before trial, KBR moved to exclude Trinseo’s damages expert and raised a point that would become the crux of the case. KBR argued the expert was required to apportion damages between misappropriated features and nonmisappropriated features of Trinseo’s polycarbonate technology.
Because the expert did not apportion damages, his opinions must be excluded from trial, KBR argued.
U.S. District Judge Andrew S. Hanen partially agreed in November 2023, writing that in the Fifth Circuit “the proper measure of damages in cases of trade secret appropriation is determined by reference to the analogous line of cases from patent law” and that apportionment is required “when the accused technology does not make up the entirety of the accused product.”
Judge Hanen called Trinseo’s damages model an “all or nothing” approach.
“Thus, Trinseo appears willing to gamble that it can convince the jury that the allegedly misappropriated trade secrets provided all of the value of KBR’s end usage/product,” he wrote. “Obviously if it fails, [the expert’s] testimony will be totally undermined. This, however, does not make it inadmissible or unreliable, at least at this stage.”
So, Trinseo presented the expert’s testimony to support its unapportioned damages model at trial. The trial began in Judge Hanen’s courtroom Jan. 8, 2024. After 12 days of testimony, Susman Godfrey’s Harrison delivered closing arguments on behalf of KBR Jan. 24, 2024. Sullivan said Harrison’s summation was “wonderful, thorough and engaging.”
“That said, the case was won strategically much earlier — specifically, in the depositions and copious attention to detail and legal analysis,” she said. “Intellectual property defense is a lot like chasing a moving goal post. You put one trade secret to bed only for the plaintiff to raise it from another angle. The goal line is always moving.”
The jury began deliberating after 12 days of testimony, Jan. 24, 2024.
It wasn’t until Jan. 26, 2024, after sending 10 notes, that the jury reached its verdict, finding KBR had only misappropriated four of the 10 alleged trade secrets. It awarded Trinseo $50 million in reasonable royalty damages and $21.2 million in unjust enrichment damages.
Sullivan was present in the courtroom for the verdict and recalled feeling “a mixture of emotions.”
“KBR was pleased to have the jury find that six out of the 10 alleged trade secrets were not trade secrets and that there was no willful misconduct,” she said. “The award was a bit shocking but we appreciated at the time that the plaintiffs were in trouble on the issue of apportionment.”
“In my mind, I knew we had a good shot at [judgment as a matter of law] as the court had been very clear to all about the gamble Trinseo was taking by failing to apportion damages.”
KBR filed a sealed motion asking the court for JMOL March 1, 2024.
Judge Hanen entered a sealed order and final judgment Sept. 11, 2024, granting KBR’s JMOL motion and wiping out the damages award entirely. He wrote that the combination of the jury finding misappropriation of only four trade secrets, along with Trinseo’s decision not to apportion damages, was “fatal” to the damages award.
The court also entered a permanent injunction barring KBR from using Trinseo’s trade secrets, and warned in the seven-page order that violations of the injunction “shall constitute contempt of court.”
“On the basis of the record and the jury’s verdict, the Court finds that the conduct of defendants Kellogg, Brown & Root … has caused and will continue to cause Trinseo Europe GmbH irreparable injury for which there is no adequate remedy at law and that a permanent injunction is necessary to address future harm to Trinseo,” Judge Hanen wrote.
A month later, both parties had appealed.
The Appeal
In briefing to the Fifth Circuit, KBR argued it was an abuse of discretion for Judge Hanen to grant Trinseo a permanent injunction. Trinseo argued Judge Hanen wrongly denied their request for a new trial on damages, wrongly granted KBR’s JMOL and wrongly determined its claims KBR had misappropriated confidential information were preempted by the Texas Uniform Trade Secrets Act.
Bracewell’s Harris argued the case on behalf of KBR Nov. 3, 2025. Michael Heidler of Vinson & Elkins argued for Trinseo. Sullivan called Harris’ performance before the court “brilliant.”
“He engaged with the court and spent the time required to clarify their questions,” she said. “He was focused on the key issues and did not allow the details to complicate the strong legal arguments on damages. It was an honor to be present and experience both arguments.”
As Harris explained, at the time the parties briefed the appeal, no federal circuit court had ever squarely addressed the impact of a plaintiff’s failure to apportion damages in a case alleging misappropriation of multiple trade secrets.
“KBR, therefore had a complex task on appeal of providing the Fifth Circuit with a compelling framework that would allow the court to situate this case within the Fifth Circuit’s existing trade-secrets jurisprudence, the nationwide jurisprudence on this precise issue and general principles of damages,” Harris said.
On Jan. 21, a 34-page opinion was issued by the Fifth Circuit affirming KBR’s victory.
Judge Irma Carrillo Ramirez wrote the court’s opinion, joined by Judges Jerry E. Smith and Carl E. Stewart. She wrote that the court had “never explicitly adopted patent law’s apportionment principles in the trade secret context” but pointed to the court’s 1974 holding in University Computing v. Lykes-Youngtown Corp., which she said “outlined the same general principles.”
“In short, trade secret damages — whether measured by a reasonable royalty or lost profits — must, like patent damages, ‘reflect the value attributable to the infringing features of the product, and no more,’” she wrote, quoting the Federal Circuit’s 2014 opinion in Ericsson v. D-Link Sys.
And the apportionment principles the Fifth Circuit outlined in University Computing, Judge Ramirez wrote, are consistent with the reasoning used by the Federal Circuit in two similar cases in 2007 and 2018, which she said the court found to be “persuasive.”
“They also reflect the commonsense notion that trade secret damages must be tied to the defendant’s wrongful conduct — i.e., the misappropriation,” she said. “Here, Trinseo presented damage estimations that assumed misappropriation of all 10 alleged trade secrets. But the jury found only four trade secrets were misappropriated. … Because Trinseo had ‘bundl[ed] all of its alleged trade secrets damages together,’ the jury did not have a reasonable basis to award damages based on the misappropriation of only four trade secrets.”
Judge Ramirez wrote that the principle that damages cannot be based on “sheer speculation” would be upended if Trinseo’s award were allowed to stand in this case.
“Allowing damages to be awarded for the misappropriation of four trade secrets based on an estimation that presumed misappropriation of 10 trade secrets lends itself to such speculation,” she wrote. “[W]e hold that, like in patent law cases, trade secret misappropriation damages must reflect the value attributable to the information or technology that is misappropriated by the defendant.”
“It follows that, where a plaintiff alleges multiple trade secrets, the jury must have a reasonable basis to award damages attributable only to the information or technology that actually qualifies as a trade secret. Trinseo failed to present evidence that would allow the jury to do so in this case.”
Harris said the Fifth Circuit’s opinion in this case will likely “have a significant impact on the way parties approach the presentation of damages evidence in cases involving the alleged misappropriation of multiple trade secrets.”
The Epitome of Success ‘Professionally and Personally’
Sullivan’s skills as a litigator, leader and friend drew praise from some of those who know her best. Blades, her colleague at KBR, noted how quickly she can “grasp the essence of a problem and distill it to its most important parts.”
“As an in-house leader, she then communicates it effectively to the business team,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s the first time Kriste has encountered a particular type of transaction. She intuitively ‘gets’ it as though she had spent years in that business.”
An avid traveler and sports fan, Blades also noted she stays up on current events and “makes time for people at all hours.” She brings to the office a “great energy,” stays positive even when negative developments arise and maintains her reputation as a “fundamentally kind, considerate and fun person,” he said.
“Kriste epitomizes success, both professionally and personally,” he said. “She will say it’s chaotic, but the truth is she has it all put together and sewed up. She makes it look effortless.”
Sullivan brought those traits to bear on the Trinseo case, where her “desire to win” was obvious to Harrison.
“Kriste’s success in this case was mighty big,” he said, adding her contributions were “extremely important” to the overall result in the case.
“Kriste rolls up her sleeves, learns the case and strategizes right along with outside counsel,” he said. “I’d work with Kriste any time on any case.”
Fun Facts: Kriste Sullivan
- Favorite book: My favorite book is a moving target as I love to read and have been in a book club for over 26 years. We just finished Theo of Golden by Allen Levi. I really enjoyed the main character’s kindness and how his actions changed the people of the small town. The book is a testament to the fact that we all need connection and to feel valued at some level.
- Favorite movie: The Sound of Music. It is an old classic. I even attended a Sound of Music singalong at the old River Oaks Theatre. It was a ball!
- Favorite drink: It is a Marg.
- Favorite restaurant: Houston is filled with fabulous restaurants. We are so lucky. My pick today would be Armandos, authentic Mexican or BCN celebrating Spanish cuisine.
- Favorite vacation: Love a good vacay. My happy place is Whistler, Canada, in the summer. The mountains are stunning. It is an outdoor paradise with hiking, biking and swimming in beautiful lakes. It is a must visit. Italy is a close second
- Hero in life: This is an easy question. My hero is Jesus. He is my Savior and my Lord. My goal is to love, serve and glorify him with all that I have. Additionally, I am blessed to have known so many people that I admire and look up to in this life. The two that pop to mind are my dad and my husband, John. Both give more that they receive and always love well.