Afiniti’s ex-CEO must face trade secrets and contract claims

None of that has been tested in court. The ruling decided only who stays in the case and where, not whether anyone did anything wrong. 

For HR, the dispute turned on the employment agreement the executive signed in 2016. It barred him from disclosing confidential information, required him to return company property when he left, and blocked him from soliciting Afiniti’s staff or customers for two years. The breach-of-contract claim, built entirely on those clauses, survived the motion to dismiss. So did the trade-secret claims. 

The court also let stand a claim under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, tied to Afiniti’s allegation that the former CEO reached into company systems after his employment ended. Access that ends with the job, the court said, is access “without authorization.” A weaker piece fell away: Afiniti’s claim that he directed current staff to pull data for him was dismissed as too vague, because the company named no employee, system or date. 

Another former employee also stayed in the case. The court kept him in over a Puerto Rico meeting where, Afiniti says, he received company code by email after leaving the firm. 

The offshore companies stayed too. For the limited purpose of deciding jurisdiction, the court treated several as a single enterprise and found substantial evidence that the former CEO ran one of them as a de facto executive, despite the defense describing him as an informal advisor. It stressed this was not a ruling on the merits.