Adam S. Cashman

Adam S. Cashman's big cases lately have seen him defending individuals accused of some very large thefts of trade secrets. In July, he got a jury's damages award against one such fellow slashed from nearly $14 million to just $1.

"That was a particularly gratifying result," he said, because the client has a family, "and this was a very, very challenging fact set."

It was undisputed that his client had left one internet security firm to become the CTO of another and that he had somehow taken a full, unauthorized copy of the first company's source code with him, which he later used in creating a competing product. Proofpoint Inc. v. Vade Secure Inc., 3:19-CV-04238 (N.D. Cal., filed July 23, 2019).

The jury awarded total damages of $13,975,659, but at the same time, it found that Cashman's client's misappropriation was not willful and malicious but that the defendant company's was -- "which was candidly a bit of a curious result given that [our client] was alleged to be the central bad actor here," he said.

Cashman successfully moved to amend the verdict so that the company alone was liable for the bulk of the damages and to cut other damages against the client to a dollar. "For a guy in his position, that's sort of a dream result." The plaintiffs have appealed.

In a case that just settled last month, Cashman Singer was "asked to parachute into a very challenging fact set that was steamrolling toward trial." The facts were "essentially undisputed that our client, along with some others, had exfiltrated something on the order of 50,000 documents from his prior employer ... and then used them ... to stand up a competing company."

Further, the court found that defendants had committed spoliation of evidence. It all was "a very messy, very challenging case" that Cashman and his team managed to "wrestle into a posture that could facilitate an arrangement" that the client is happy with. MicroVention Inc. v. Balt USA, 20-cv-2400 (C.D. Cal, filed Dec. 22, 2020).

Last year, he successfully defended a young entrepreneur who had founded but was then pushed out of a company that makes remote patient monitoring devices for hospitals. "He went on to do something in an adjacent space, but not directly competing," but he was sued for trade secret misappropriation anyway.

"We were able to sort of dismantle the alleged trade secrets," Cashman said, and the case was dismissed with prejudice in March 2023. Harmonize Inc. v. Zhao, 22-CIV-00615 (San Mateo Sup. Ct., filed Feb. 17, 2022).

-- Don DeBenedictis