A US court has handed SNR Denton fresh ammunition to defend itself against a $30m (£19.9m) lawsuit brought by Huron Consulting Group over allegations that the law firm improperly poached five consultants, writes the Am Law Daily.

Huron sued SNR Denton US legacy firm Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal after the law firm three years ago hired healthcare partner Lisa Murtha, a former Huron consultant who is accused in Huron's complaint of breaching non-compete agreements by recruiting other Huron employees to join her.

The ruling handed down on Wednesday (15 February) by the Appellate Court of Illinois's First Judicial District allows SNR to pursue its own claims against Huron, which the law firm alleges caused it to lose a client's business.

SNR Denton said in a statement that the firm is "very pleased that the appellate court has allowed these claims against Huron to proceed"

The statement added: "We are proud of our people, and look forward to the opportunity to address the meritless claims asserted against our people from a consulting firm that should know better."

Filed in June 2009 in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Huron's suit came a few months after Sonnenschein recruited Washington DC-based Murtha to launch its own healthcare compliance practice. Four other Huron employees followed Murtha to Sonnenschein, which Huron's complaint claimed was planning to create a non-legal consulting subsidiary. In the suit, Huron sought an injunction and $30m in damages.

SNR has consistently denied Huron's allegations, contending that it did nothing wrong in recruiting the company's employees and that Murtha's non-compete was unenforceable because it purported to restrict the movement of a lawyer.

In its formal response to Huron's complaint, SNR included counterclaims for defamation and tortious interference with contract. The counterclaims stemmed from SNR's pursuit of a new client, Huntington Memorial Hospital, which Murtha had previously represented while at the accounting firm Parente Randolph but which she did not represent while at Huron due to a non-compete agreement.

In October 2010, not long after Sonnenschein completed its merger with the UK's Denton Wilde Sapte, Huntington accepted a proposal by SNR Denton and Murtha under which they would provide certain auditing services to the hospital's institutional review board.

Huron, which was already working with the board, learned that SNR and Murtha were set to interview and audit the work of a Huron employee. A Huron managing director, Matthew Lester, allegedly called Huntington's director of compliance and informed him that SNR and Murtha were in the middle of litigation over the purported violation of her non-compete agreement.

Huntington subsequently terminated SNR in November 2010. Murtha claimed Lester's statement was false and defamatory, and SNR claimed the call resulted in the firm losing business with Huntington.

After determining that the "gist" of Lester's statement was substantially true, Judge LeRoy Martin granted Huron's motion to dismiss the counterclaims last April. But the appellate court reversed Martin's ruling on Wednesday and reinstated all of the counterclaims.

"We cannot say as a matter of law Lester's alleged statement is either substantially true or false given the obvious factual dispute as to whether Murtha violated her non-compete agreement with Huron," the appellate court ruled.

The Am Law Daily is a US affiliate title of Legal Week.