Stryker Subsidiary Files $3 Million Lawsuit Claiming DePuy Poached Employees, Customers

Stryker Corporation’s orthopedics business Howmedica Osteonics accused DePuy Orthopaedics, Inc. and five former sales team employees of breach of contract.

According to a complaint recently filed by Stryker in a New Jersey federal court, the five sales team employees defected and immediately began soliciting customers in Northern California — a move that Stryker claims will cost the company approximately $3.4 million in 2014 alone. In the document, Stryker claims that former salesmen Brett Sarkisian, Bryan Wyatt, Keegan Freeman, Michael Nordyke, and Taylor Smith reneged on their one-year noncompete agreements when they resigned en masse from Stryker in April and began promoting DePuy products among area doctors shortly afterwards.

The five accused were key members of the Stryker Howmedica team assigned to promote and sell orthopedic reconstructive and trauma products to physicians and surgeons in the Fresno and Bakersfield, CA areas, according to the complaint. Stryker claims their illegal actions will cost the company up to 90 percent of its reconstructive devices sales and between 60 and 70 percent of its trauma parts sales in the region.

The suit alleges that the five company defectors submitted almost identical resignation letters simultaneously in April and did not respond to phone calls, emails, or text messages. 

“In conjunction with the timing of the employee defendants’ resignations, the similarities of their resignation letters, and their departure to the same company, it is clear that defendants engaged in a calculated and systematic attempt to decimate Stryker's recon and trauma business in the territory,” according to Law360’s citation of the complaint.

In the complaint, Stryker charged its former employees with counts of “breach of contract and breach of duty of loyalty, plus counts against DePuy including aiding and abetting a breach of duty of loyalty, tortious interference with contract, two counts of tortious interference with prospective economic advantage, unfair advantage and corporate raiding.”

Stryker is asking the court for an injunction to prevent the five accused from soliciting its customers. Stryker is also seeking actual, incidental, and punitive damages and disgorgement of all compensation the five men received while employed at Stryker’s Howmedica.