Phonexa Holdings v. O'Connor CA2/5

I. BACKGROUND

A. Phonexa’s Complaint Phonexa filed its complaint against O’Connor and Halley in August 2020; the gist of the lawsuit is that they stole proprietary information from the company. Among other things, Phonexa alleged O’Connor’s relationship with senior management at the company deteriorated and she took two days off work starting on July 20, 2020, during which she “cop[ied] the hard drive of her work computer to a series of personal external hard drives and thumb drives” with help from her husband, Halley. Phonexa

1 Undesignated statutory references that follow are to the Code of Civil Procedure.

2 terminated O’Connor’s employment on July 22, 2020, and Phonexa further alleged O’Connor copied the electronic materials at the direction of Leslie Rosario (Rosario), vice president of human resources at Informa Markets Manufacturing, LLC (Informa), to steal Phonexa’s trade secrets.2 Phonexa’s specific causes of action against O’Connor are for breaching confidentiality agreements, breach of fiduciary duty, violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) (18 U.S.C. § 1030), violation of California’s analogue of the CFAA (Pen. Code, § 502), misappropriation of trade…