Gail Warrior, a serial entrepreneur known for building one of the largest minority woman-owned construction companies in the country, was sued Wednesday by a competitor of her latest venture, healthcare company CASPR Group.
In the lawsuit, filed in Dallas County by DBG Group Investments, the Dallas-based air and surface purification products manufacturer alleges Warrior participated in a scheme with her husband to steal DBG’s confidential information in order to build CASPR in 2016.
The lawsuit also names DBG affiliate, DBG Group International, as a plaintiff. In addition to Warrior and CASPR, Tennessee resident Ellen Johnston was also named as a defendant.
Company representatives with CASPR did not immediately return requests for comment. Johnston’s lawyer, Steve Williams of Munsch Hardt, said his client denies the allegations brought against her.
While Warrior, Johnston and CASPR are the latest targets of litigation brought by DBG, Wednesday’s lawsuit mainly focuses on a series of events involving Warrior and Johnston’s spouses, who are defendants in separate but related litigation against DBG.
The trade secrets DBG says were stolen involve air purification technology with origins in NASA spacecrafts. The intellectual property rights associated with the technology eventually made their way to Tennessee-based EcoQuest Manufacturing, which DBG acquired in 2009. Johnston and her husband, Allen Johnston, both had worked at EcoQuest, but left immediately after the acquisition to form a competing company, Greentech Environmental.
According to the lawsuit, at the center of the scheme is Warrior’s husband, Christophe Suchy, a longtime distributor of DBG’s air purification products who DBG claims lured the company into a joint venture in order to obtain DBG’s confidential business plans and strategies. Suchy had been a distributor with EcoQuest before DBG acquired it, the lawsuit says.
DBG says it later learned that Suchy had been doing business with GreenTech in violation of a lawsuit settlement DBG and GreenTech had reached in 2013. DBG sued GreenTech and the Johnstons after learning they had been “knocking off DBG’s products,” and the settlement agreement barred GreenTech from manufacturing or marketing products similar to DBG’s and from supplying any products to current or former DBG distributors, including Suchy’s company.
According to the lawsuit, Warrior entered the scheme in 2016, when she pitched distribution services to DBG and Suchy’s joint venture (called ActivTek Global) through an entity called Airvolution360. Although she “represented separateness from Suchy with respect to Airvolution360,” DBG alleges the two were “scheming and conspiring” to wrongfully use DBG’s confidential information.
DBG says this scheme was carried out after it declined to engage Warrior as a distribution partner when Warrior and Suchy created their competing company, CASPR, based on DBG’s confidential plans and strategy that Suchy obtained through the ActivTek joint venture. DBG alleges Warrior and Suchy further conspired with GreenTech and the Johnstons by sourcing products for sales in the medical channel.
The lawsuit also alleges that Suchy, through his role as CEO of CASPR’s sister company, ReSPR, has been taking credit for client tests and referrals performed on DBG products and in turn using them to market GreenTech products.
“The multifaceted attack on DBG’s business is requiring DBG to take a multifaceted approach to protect its interests in multiple proceedings,” the lawsuit says.
DBG claims that Suchy breached his fiduciary duty to their joint venture and that Warrior aided and abetted that breach as a result. The lawsuit also claims civil conspiracy, unjust enrichment, aiding and abetting of fraud, theft of property and tortious interference.
Barnes & Thornburg partner Victor Vital, who represents DBG, said he anticipates his clients will seek millions in damages.
“The defendants’ pattern of conduct and the scheme they perpetrated across the board is brazen,” Vital told The Texas Lawbook. “The scheme included deceiving and double-crossing my client, who seeks to vindicate its rights regarding the confidential information they are wrongfully exploiting. Moreover, we believe the defendants fundraised in the market by improperly using our strategies, data and technology. And we believe they are currently deceiving their own customers by falsely using our data and tests to sell their technology.”
In March, GreenTech and CASPR announced an initiative with hospitals nationwide to install duct-mounted surface and air purification systems to support disinfection efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Michael Hurst, Suchy’s attorney in the previous litigation who is anticipated to defend Warrior in the new suit, told The Texas Lawbook that he views the latest lawsuit as “another heavy-handed attempt by DBG to forum shop.”
He said DBG has attempted to “push off” an upcoming arbitration, slated to begin Aug. 24, and it “keeps filing lawsuits in different places” in an attempt to develop a backup plan in case the arbitration does not go DBG’s way.
“They didn’t even wait until Judge [Anne] Ashby issued an opinion in the arbitration before taking another heavy-handed step in trying to punish, intimidate and demoralize my clients,” said Hurst, a partner at Lynn Pinker Hurst & Schwegmann in Dallas.
The litigation connected to the pending arbitration began in Dallas County District Court. The upcoming Aug. 24 arbitration is between DBG and Suchy, but another arbitration is scheduled for the end of the year that will pit DBG against GreenTech and the Johnstons, Williams said.
Williams reflected a sentiment similar to Hurst’s on behalf of his own clients. In addition to representing Ellen Johnston in the new lawsuit, Williams has been representing Mr. and Mrs. Johnston and the GreenTech entities in the underlying disputes.
“It really appears to be an effort on the part of DBG to avoid the arbitration agreement that is in place with GreenTech, and it appears to be an attempt to circumvent the arbitration currently pending between the other parties,” Williams told The Texas Lawbook.
Williams added that the litigation DBG brought against GreenTech after their 2013 lawsuit was in violation of their settlement agreement, which required the parties “to sit down and try to work out their disagreement before filing suit.
“Now [DBG has] come up with a new narrative that the earlier settlement was somehow conditional, but we don’t believe there’s any merit to speak to that argument,” he said.
According to court documents, Suchy obtained a temporary injunction in his previous litigation against DBG tied to allegations that appear mirror-image the claims in DBG’s new suit; in 2018, Judge Emily Tobolowsky found that DGB violated its joint venture agreement with Suchy when it solicited customers of Suchy’s company, Activtek-Europe.