It’s strange enough that Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy was sued for alleged antitrust violations. To our knowledge, it’s a first for an Am Law 200 firm. But the way it was resolved — on Tuesday a Manhattan federal district court judge dismissed it before discovery — was stranger still.
What the heck is going on here? The dispute starts with Ryan Freel, a lawyer who worked for Fragomen from 1999 until he took a job at the immigration consulting firm Emigra as vice president of operations in 2005. While at Emigra, Freel was a member of Emigra’s management team. He reported to the chief executive officer and allegedly had access to all aspects of its business, trade secrets and confidential information including, among other things, its strategies, customer lists, pricing, profit and loss data, and the like. In 2007 Freel returned to Fragomen, where Emigra claims he shared confidential information about Emigra’s business and began contacting certain Emigra customers on Fragomen’s behalf. Emigra sued in Manhattan federal district court, claiming that the hiring was part of Fragomen’s anticompetitive attempt to claim a monopoly on immigration work.
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