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IBP9/11/2001
Appellant IBP, Inc., appeals from an adverse summary judgment in its suit based upon actions of appellee Steven M. Klumpe in obtaining and furnishing documents containing alleged trade secrets to Klumpe's attorney, appellee Jeff Blackburn, who then provided them in discovery to attorneys who represented Klumpe's stepson in a personal injury suit against IBP. Appellant urges, as to the summary judgment in favor of appellees that the combined affirmative-evidence and no-evidence motions for summary judgment were erroneously granted because appellees did not seek summary judgment on all of the causes of action alleged by appellant, and because, as to the grounds appellees presented in seeking summary judgment, (1) appellant presented evidence creating genuine material fact issues on each element of its claims challenged by the no-evidence parts of the motions, including damages, (2) affidavits supporting the affirmative-evidence parts of appellees' motions were defective, and (3) the actions of appellees were not privileged.
We affirm in part and reverse and remand in part.
I. BACKGROUND
In April, 1997, appellee Steven M. Klumpe and his stepson, Chris Escamilla, were employed by appellant at its Amarillo, Texas, meat processing facility. Escamilla was a laborer in the slaughter department; Klumpe was a superintendent in the department.
On April 3, 1997, Escamilla suffered injuries to his hand while operating a meat cutting machine called the "hock-cutter machine." Escamilla consulted attorney and appellee Jeff Blackburn in regard to his injury. Blackburn referred Escamilla to attorneys at the law firm of Fadduol and Glasheen, P.C. ("Fadduol & Glasheen," or "the law firm"). Fadduol & Glasheen filed suit for damages against appellant and Escamilla's supervisor based on Escamilla's injury (the Escamilla suit). Pleadings in the Escamilla suit included allegations of inadequate staffing and negligent production procedures on the part of appellant.
Before Escamilla's injury, appellant had promulgated guidelines for various aspects of its production processes. The guidelines were incorporated into documents called "Crewing Guides." The Crewing Guides ("the Guides") were developed from time-motion studies of appellant's production employees and processes. Appellant spent considerable sums to develop the Guides as part of attempts to reduce its costs of production. According to the affidavit of James Crow, the personnel manager of appellant's Amarillo plant, the information contained in the Guides gave appellant a competitive advantage over competitors who had no knowledge of the Guides or did not use the Guides in their business. Crow's affidavit set out that (1) appellant considered the Guides a trade secret and protected the Guides' contents by way of various security procedures, such as limiting the number of hard copies of the Guides and by limiting the number of employees allowed access to the Guides; (2) all of appellant's employees were required to sign agreements not to disclose appellant's trade secrets and confidential and proprietary information; (3) part of the measures taken to prevent unauthorized disclosure was to limit access to the Guides; (4) employees signed non-disclosure agreements in regard to "trade secret, technical information or business information" of appellant not available to the public; and (5) Klumpe did not have authorization to remove the Guides from appellant's facility. As a superintendent, Klumpe had access to the Guides and signed a non-disclosure agreement. Klumpe also signed Conflict of Interest commitments whereby he agreed that he would not, for his or anyone else's gain, make use of or disclose confidential inf
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