Legal Question in Business Law in Pennsylvania

Re: business law

You asked about the ethics and liability of providing customer information from business that was going out of business.

What you did was probably not proper. The information could be considered proprietary information and proprietary information is protectable. But, the other factors in this situation may mitigate the damage. Namely, that the you hopefully didn't provide any information other than names (and contact information) to the second employer. That is public information and all you really did was give the owner a shortcut to get to persons who would likely need his services. Also, the damages would be limited because the company was going out of business and therefore there would be minimal economic loss.

The final question is what are the damages for which you or the person using the information may be liable? You could be liable for both actual and punitive damages where your actions caused harm to a party. The company using the information could be held liable to the extent they saw any increase in sales from the "new" customers.

But I don't think either situation is likely. Unless we are talking about big money there isn't any reason to pursue the matter. The cost of doing so could exceed the value of the case.

A last concern would be that you may have violated state or federal laws regarding economic espionage. That statement is not meant to cause fear but instead should function as a warning to all readers of these posts. An employee owes a duty of loyalty to an employer, even after that relationship ends. The only way that duty of loyalty can be abrogated is by consent of both parties. In actuality the question of criminal violation would be fact dependent and would need to be considered with more information.

Regards,

Roger