Johnson and Johnson orthopedic company DePuy Synthes has filed suit against Globus Medical and three of its own former sales representatives now working for the Pennsylvania company. DePuy is accusing them of breach of contract by joining the competitor, massdevice.com reported Wednesday. The orthopedic industry blog noted this is the latest lawsuit filed by DePuy against ex-sales reps who now work for a Globus distributor, for Globus directly or for another competitor. This lawsuit follows July breach of contract charges against two former sales reps who quit to work for Globus distributor Sky Surgical, and a suit last month against another pair who quit for Peerless Surgical. The three representatives in the latest suit covered territories in Texas for DePuy, according to the lawsuit, which contends that Globus hired Jared Bunn, Aaron Garza and Jason Glynn despite knowing that they were subject to confidentiality and non-compete clauses in their contracts with DePuy, massdevice.com reports court documents as saying. Bunn and Garza quit in September 2012, according to the documents, and Glynn resigned in March 2013, just weeks after his supervisor at DePuy, Jody Stevenson, quit to join Globus. “Globus intentionally recruited the individual defendants as a team in an effort to rapidly build its own business, not by competing through its products, services, and pricing, but instead by appropriating and capitalizing on the goodwill, customer relationships, and confidential information that DePuy Synthes necessarily entrusts to its sales employees,” according to the lawsuit. “By virtue of Globus’s recruiting and hiring, around the same time, of several DePuy Synthes sales employees with responsibility for overlapping or geographically adjacent territories, the former DePuy Synthes sales employees are able to use their collective efforts and assistance to each other in soliciting sales from DePuy Synthes customers while claiming not to violate their individual non-compete agreements with DePuy Synthes. Globus has continued to recruit additional sales employees of DePuy Synthes with the intention of building its business based on the goodwill, customer relationships, and confidential information of DePuy Synthes.”
