Marsh & McLennan Agency has filed a lawsuit against brokerage Patriot Growth Insurance Services and eight former members of the surety team over an alleged poaching scheme.
The lawsuit, filed in early June in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and later remanded to state court, named former employees Keith Wallace Harrelson, Ryan McClendon, Albert Bowen Evans, Jeffrey Cutshall, Rebecca Burrus, Hailee Wesson, Hunter Harper and Jennifer Barranco, all of whom worked at MMA’s Birmingham, Ala., office.
MMA said the group made up about half of Birmingham’s bonded team, and the suit said most resigned on May 18, leaving letters on laptops and cellphones. In the days that followed, Barranco resigned, as did two others on the team, Michelle Hicks and Kayla Loyd. A total of 11 people resigned to join Patriot, doing business under the Turner Insurance & Bonding Co. brand, MMA said.
MMA said each of the defendants breached their employment contracts, noting in the lawsuit that several of the defendants immediately filed declaratory judgments in Alabama to make their MMA agreements unenforceable.
Since the team’s departure, MMA said it has received no less than 71 brokerage documents of record transferring clients to Patriot, resulting in at least $3.5 million in annual recurring revenue losses as of May 22. MMA alleges that some of the defendants spoke or met with clients before resigning to make them aware of plans to join Patriot.
In the lawsuit, MMA accuses Patriot of “encouraging and facilitating” MMA employees’ departures. MMA claimed that Patriot had limited operations in Birmingham, but “rather than grow its business organically, Patriot targeted and systematically solicited MMA’s employees and illegally poached them and MMA’s customers.”
MMA said all of the defendants, except Harper, worked at J. Smith Lanier & Co., which merged with MMA in early 2017. The agent said in the lawsuit that all defendants signed non-solicitation and confidentiality agreements at the time of the merger, as well as when Harper joined MMA in 2021.
The Patriots could not immediately be reached for comment.
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