MGM Resorts sue Ocean Casino over executive poaching. Filed at Nevada’s US District Court, MGM Resorts, Borgata’s parent company, says Ocean Casino has illegally recruited some of its former marketing executives. MGM claims Ocean has hired six ex-Borgata execs, with at least two breaching their one-year non-competitive agreements.
The lawsuit notes that “Ocean is in the process of raiding Borgata’s casino marketing department. Injunctive relief is necessary because all informal efforts to resolve the dispute and protect Borgata’s business from irreparable harm have failed”.
MGM’s lawsuit mainly focuses on two of its former marketing executives Kelly Ashman Burke, who was Borgata’s executive director of marketing, and William Callahan, who was the resort’s vice president of relationship marketing.
The firm alleges that after the termination of Burke’s employment agreement, Ocean quickly offered her a job. She brought to Ocean “her unique access and intimate knowledge of Borgata’s marketing strategies and customer loyalty databases.”
MGM says that Ocean wooed Callahan away from Borgata in the midst of his continuing employment deal. He took with him his Borgata company cell phone and “all of the trade secrets stored therein.”
The lawsuit concludes that “The near simultaneous solicitation and hiring of these individuals — all of whom are subject to statutory and common law trade secret restrictions — to work in positions which will require the immediate misuse of those trade secrets and other confidential and proprietary information demonstrates Ocean’s intention to cripple Borgata’s casino operation and misappropriate both Borgata’s business relationships and its trade secrets and other confidential and proprietary information,”
[image: Macau Photo Agency]
