COLUMBUS, Ohio — The Ohio Supreme Court recently ruled that an Allen County funeral director, Patrick Orians, did not breach the state’s trade secrets regulations when he approached clients from his former place of employment. The court determined that the client data he utilized was public knowledge.
The judgment explained that the Ohio Uniform Trade Secrets Act is intended to protect information which is not widely known or easily accessible to others, provided the owner has made genuine efforts to keep it confidential. However, Chief Justice Sharon L. Kennedy emphasized that the client data Orians used was already accessible outside the funeral home. It became public information before a 2021 amendment in the state law.
Several justices, including R. Patrick DeWine, Jennifer Brunner, and Joseph T. Deters, backed Chief Justice Kennedy’s viewpoint. On the other hand, Justice Patrick F. Fischer, in a separate opinion, expressed agreement with the main judgment but highlighted that the court did not discuss the potential of barring civil lawsuits based on the unauthorized use of non-trade-secret information.
The backdrop to the case is that Hanneman Family bought multiple funeral homes in 2019, one of which was where Orians worked. Orians discovered he would not be kept on post-acquisition. Before moving to a different funeral service, he took a list of clients who had prearranged funeral services. Upon joining his new employer, Orians approached about 100 of these clients, many of whom transferred their business to his new company.
Hanneman Family subsequently took legal action against Orians, claiming he had stolen trade secrets and interfered with their business. The initial trial ruled in favor of Orians, asserting that the contracts were not trade secrets, especially since such data had previously been publicly disclosed by the Ohio Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors. Despite an appeal by Hanneman Family, the decision was upheld.
When reviewing the case, the Supreme Court noted that the state’s Trade Secrets Act, established in 1994, was designed to protect information that brings economic value from its confidentiality. The court reiterated that most of the client data in the contracts was publicly available before Orians accessed it. Therefore, it couldn’t be deemed a trade secret.
Hanneman Family proposed that they could still sue Orians for other potential breaches even if he hadn’t infringed the Trade Secrets Act. The majority of the court decided that they did not need to address this issue.
Justice Fischer, however, expressed the need to consider the broader implications of the Act and whether it also covers unauthorized use of non-trade-secret information. He recommended clarity on this front, either through legislative changes or alignment with most states’ interpretation of the Uniform Trade Secrets Act.