Jeanne A. Fugate

Fugate originally wanted to be a journalist. But while at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill’s college paper, she decided to change course after working on a story about a lawsuit filed against the school.

“There was a local sole practitioner suing the university,” Fugate said. “I realized then I wanted to be like him.”

Long after changing career paths, she handles mostly trade secret cases for Boies Schiller Flexner.

In 2016, she won a $6.15 million jury verdict in favor of her client, Ansett Aircraft Spares & Services Inc., which specializes in buying spare airplane parts, upgrading them and taking a commission on the resold inventory.

Seven years earlier, terminated employee Tessie Cue took copies of a nearly finalized deal for parts with Lufthansa Group and used the contract to secure a job at competing aircraft consignment company Infinity Air Inc. and substituted Ansett’s name with Infinity’s. Ansett Aircraft Spares & Services Inc. v. Tessie Cue et al., BC482166 (L.A. Super. Ct., filed Apr. 12, 2012).

Fugate said one of the reasons she believes her side won was because one defendant spent three trial days focusing on the question of liability. One defendant cross-examined her client’s chief executive officer about whether each and every term of the lengthy document was a trade secret. “This focus was not persuasive to the jury and led to a unanimous verdict on the trade secret claim and the jury awarded Ansett all of the damages it sought,” Fugate said in an email. “The defendants did not put forward any viable alternative theory, having banked on their liability arguments.”

Outside of her trade secret work, Fugate spearheads a diversity fellowship at her firm and invites a law school every summer to be groomed for a federal judicial clerkship. She hopes to expand that program to include more participants at other firm locations throughout the country.

— Arin Mikailian