After a decade of litigation and appeals, a Susman Godfrey team secured a $175 million jury verdict Friday on behalf of technology company HouseCanary against Amrock after a San Antonio jury found that Amrock misappropriated HouseCanary’s valuable trade secrets and defrauded the company through false promises.
Jurors deliberated for nearly three hours over the 13 questions before delivering their verdict after a nearly four-week trial in the Bexar County Courthouse in San Antonio. The damages award does not include nearly 10 years of prejudgment interest and attorney fees.
“We are extremely grateful that a jury has once again found HouseCanary developed valuable trade secrets that were stolen and misused by Amrock (now Rocket Close) and that Amrock defrauded our client with false promises,” Susman Godfrey partner Max Tribble and co-lead counsel for HouseCanary said in a news release.
This is the second jury verdict in favor of HouseCanary on claims that the company’s proprietary home valuation analytics and data were stolen by Amrock.
“Amrock has been fighting this case for a decade, claiming it did nothing wrong and that HouseCanary had no intellectual property. We have now had two juries strongly disagree. We are proud of our client for seeing this through,” Susman Godfrey co-managing partner Kalpana Srinivasan and co-lead counsel for HouseCanary, said in a news release.
In 2016, startup company HouseCanary accused Amrock of stealing trade secrets that were the basis for its real estate appraisal app to create its own competing software. HouseCanary had given Amrock access to the data for $5 million a year under a November 2015 software licensing contract, according to court records.
Amrock has maintained throughout the litigation that HouseCanary’s app wasn’t functional, and that claim was the basis of its breach of contract and fraudulent inducement suit against HouseCanary.
Its 2018 trial lasted more than two months and resulted in a $740 million verdict. On appeal, the Fourth Court of Appeals determined a flawed jury charge doomed the massive award.
The Texas Supreme Court sent the case back to Bexar County in September 2022.
Harriet O’Neill and Catherine M. Stone of Langley Banack and David M. Prichard of Prichard Oliver Montpas represented Amrock. They did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Representing HouseCanary alongside Tribble and Srinivasan were Susman Godfrey partners Joe Grinstein, Rocco Magni, David Peterson and Michael Brightman and associates Armando Lozano and Taylor Wilson, Jr. HouseCanary was also represented by Ricardo Cedillo of Davis, Cedillo & Mendoza, who tried the case alongside Susman Godfrey.
The case is HouseCanary, Inc. v. Amrock, LLC, 2016-CI-06300.