© 2015 The Texas Lawbook.
By Mark Curriden
(Oct. 15) – Professional engineer Russell Price and his team at Houston-based Suncoast Post-Tension are hired to handle some of the biggest and most prominent construction projects in Texas because of the unique expertise they have in strengthening high-rise buildings made of concrete.
While Suncoast has helped build the 35-story Marriott Marquis Hotel and the Phillips 66 parking garage in downtown Houston, as well as the Dallas Cowboys new headquarters in Frisco, the company waged a lengthy legal fight involving its proprietary engineering methods that it claims were stolen by a competitor.
On Tuesday, a federal jury in Houston ruled that Sterling Engineering Group and its chairman, Sandeep N. Patel, conspired with a former Suncoast manager to illegally obtain and use work product created by Suncoast engineers and protected under the Texas trade secrets law and federal copyright laws.
The eight-person jury heard five days of testimony and then deliberated eight hours before ordering Houston-based Sterling and Patel to pay Suncoast $11 million in actual damages and another $13.5 million in punitive damages.
Lawyers for Sterling did not respond to requests for an interview, but the company is expected to file a request for a new trial and a notice of appeal with U.S. District Judge Vanessa Gilmore within the next 30 days.
The issues in the case trace to October 2012, when one of Suncoast’s senior managers, Peter Scoppa, quit to join a competitor, PT USA, which is a sister company of Sterling.
Six months later, Suncoast engineers claim that a potential client sent them custom drawings that were identical to their work but were under PT USA’s label.
Scoppa told Suncoast that he received the information in an email from a source in India, says John Keville, a litigation partner at Winston & Strawn in Houston who represents Suncoast.
Police in India tracked down the source and confiscated his computer, which contained evidence of communications between Scoppa and Sterling officials, according to Keville.
Through the use of computer forensics, Suncoast showed at trial that some of the PT USA drawings still contained remnants of Suncoast’s title block and professional engineers’ seals, he says.
Suncoast sued Sterling, Patel, PT USA and Scoppa, claiming their actions violated the Texas trade secrets law and federal copyright laws.
“Suncoast spent decades building a library of drawings, software, and tools, and the jury spoke loudly about the importance of this intellectual property,” Keville says.
“It is an important verdict in that it signals the willingness of the community to protect the work of engineers and technical drafters and confirms the importance of computer forensics to uncover data theft,” he says.
Keville says forensic experts testified during the trial that they uncovered evidence of the theft and deliberate destruction of email evidence during the litigation.
“I went my entire life without going to court or having much dealings with lawyers, but I have a whole new respect and appreciation for lawyers and the work they do,” Price says. “Not only did we find a good lawyer, I also found a new good friend.”
Suncoast provided engineering services in the construction of Exxon Mobil’s new 385-acre campus in Spring, Texas, the parking garage expansion at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport and the Toyota Motor Corp. campus in Plano.
In addition to Keville, other Winston attorneys representing Suncoast are John O’Neill, Sheryl Falk, Erin Villasenor and Renee Wilkerson.
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