Windsor’s Nerium lawsuit heads to mediation, 2018 trial date set

After claiming to have spent ‘six years developing, co-founding, and co-leading Nerium’s record breaking global sales which has topped four hundred million dollars ($400,000,000.00) annually‘, in March Dennis Windsor was terminated as company President.

A lawsuit followed in April, through which Windsor is seeking $22 million dollars in damages.

In addition to damages, Windsor is claiming copyright over Nerium’s business operations and ownership royalties.

Nerium claim ‘the alleged oral agreement between Plaintiff and Defendants never
existed’ and that Windsor has ‘vastly overstated his contributions, if any, to‘ Nerium.

Counterclaims filed against Windsor by Nerium allege ‘misuse of Nerium’s confidential information and trade secrets‘.

In his role as Nerium’s initial President and in his other positions at Nerium, Windsor was provided access to a wide range of Nerium’s confidential information, including some of Nerium’s most competitively-sensitive trade secrets.

Windsor continued to request and receive access to such information up until the eve of his termination, and he joined the executive leadership team of Nerium’s direct competitor, Jeunesse Global, the week after his termination.

Windsor was obligated to return all Nerium property in his possession, including Nerium’s confidential information and trade secrets, immediately upon his termination.

Instead, Windsor wiped all of the data that was on his Nerium laptop before returning it—destroying evidence that may be highly relevant to this case—while keeping a partial backup copy of this data and other Nerium information on other computers and hard drives in his possession.

The implication here is that Windsor has shared Nerium’s “competitively-sensitive” information with Jeunesse. Windsor was appointed Chief Development Officer at Jeunesse shortly after his Nerium termination.

The case has progressed slowly. A Joint Status Report filed on September 16th states

the parties estimate that they will need 18 months to complete discovery in this matter.

The parties anticipate the case will be ready for trial by September 2018.

The parties estimate the length of trial to be 10 trial days (and) have requested a jury trial.

A scheduling order has set a trial date for October 1st, 2018.

In the meantime the parties will enter mediation negotiations, to be undertaken no later than June 15th, 2017.

The parties have not engaged in any substantive settlement discussions, though both sides are open to reaching an early resolution in this case.

There’s a lot at stake here, with a win for Windsor meaning Nerium would effectively no longer exist as it does today.

Personally I think this one is going to be settled before 2018. It’s too long for Nerium and Jeunesse to have such a serious lawsuit hanging over their heads.

Update 21st January 2017 – As per a December 19th Joint Status Report:

The parties are presently focused on searching for, collecting, and securing the return of Defendant Nerium’s information from Plaintiff, and have made progress towards that end.

The parties hope to have meaningful settlement discussions after Nerium’s information is returned and an exchange of documents and further discovery occurs in this case.

As I’ve said before, I don’t see this one going to trial.

Update 1st July 2017 – As per a June 19th order, the deadline for mediation between Windsor and Nerium has been reset for December 15th, 2017.