Navigating Trade Secret Misappropriation Claims After Berry-Helfand

In recent years, the Texas Supreme Court has revisited the requirements for establishing damages in trade secret misappropriation cases. The current trend of Texas law clarifies the need to present some concrete or objective evidence to support damage awards. 

In Southwestern Energy Production Co. v. Berry-Helfand, the Texas Supreme Court outlined the flexible options available to prove trade secret misappropriation damages under the most common theories, but emphasized that “sheer speculation” is inappropriate to support damages in any lost profits case. Soon after, in Horizon Health Corp. v. Acadia Healthcare Co., Inc., the Texas Supreme Court applied Berry-Helfand and vacated a multi-million-dollar jury verdict awarded on the grounds of impermissibly speculative evidence. Cases following Berry-Helfand reveal that Texas’s “flexible and imaginative” approach to valuationempowers parties to tailor damage theories to fit their individual needs, but also that damage awards cannot stray too far from the evidence presented.