Anna-Rose Mathieson

Mathieson, who co-leads the California Appellate Law Group, recently won a pair of victories in trade secrets misappropriation cases.

A former clerk of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died in September, she said the late justice “showed me and so many others the value of quiet attention to detail.”

Mathieson said she has started filing more amicus briefs in cases before the U.S. Supreme Court as she tries to build her firm’s practice.

In November 2019, she prevailed in a case affirming denial of a preliminary injunction against an employee hired to work at the Waldorf Beverly Hills from a competing hotel.

A 2nd District Court of Appeal panel affirmed Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Mitchell L. Beckloff’s decision against the owners of the Peninsula Beverly Hills hotel, which accused Mathieson’s client of taking a list of its high-paying regular guests.

Mathieson said the employee, Houssem Tasco, had a specialty of working with rich Middle Eastern clients.

While Tasco had many emails on his personal devices, that was because his former employer expected him to use them, she said. He turned them over once the lawsuit was filed.

“There was no evidence he was trying to get data to take,” Mathieson added. The Belvedere Hotel Partnership v. Tasco et al., B292903 (2nd Dist. Court of Appeal, filed Nov. 25, 2019).

In May, the 6th District Court of Appeal affirmed a trial win for technology giant Apple Inc. in a case she argued after attorneys with O’Melveny & Myers LLP won the case on summary judgment.

Mathieson was brought in to argue the appeal. Hooked Media Group’s CEO looked for a buyer.

Apple passed on buying the company, which developed a recommendations app for mobile devices, according to the opinion by Justice Adrienne M. Grover.

But Apple was interested in hiring some of Hooked Media Group’s employees, which it did. Grover, however, affirmed a Santa Clara County Superior Court judge’s rejection of all of its claims. Hooked Media Group Inc. v. Apple Inc., H044396 (6th Dist. Court of Appeal, filed May 28, 2020).

“Allowing an action for trade secrets misappropriation against a former employee for using his or her own knowledge to benefit a new employer is impermissible because it would be equivalent to retroactively imposing on the employee a covenant not to compete,” Grover wrote.

— Craig Anderson