Court issues TRO to AssuredPartners against Alliant in poaching case
- September 16, 2025
- Posted by: Web workers
- Category: Finance
A South Carolina federal district court on Wednesday granted a temporary restraining order sought by AssuredPartners Inc. against Alliant Insurance Services Inc. in poaching litigation.
The poaching lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Columbia in September in connection with Alliant hiring an agribusiness brokerage leader and four associates, in AssuredPartners of South Carolina LLC and AssuredPartners Capital Inc. v. Alliant Insurance Services Inc., Richard H. Lonneman Jr., Meghan Schultz, Amanda Peterson, Melissa A. Bugeski and Laurence Rushe.
Alliant had argued against the TRO, stating in a Sept. 28 filing that AssuredPartners motion seeking it “is plainly insufficient to justify the extraordinary, emergency relief they seek.
“Plaintiffs cite no actual evidence of any clients who have terminated their accounts with AssuredPartners as a result of improper actions by Defendants, no actual evidence of improper solicitations by the New Hires, and no actual evidence of the New Hires misappropriating or using Plaintiffs’ alleged trade secrets or confidential information,” the broker argued.
The district court disagreed. In granting AssuredPartners the TRO, the court said it “has established it is likely to succeed in showing the Individual Defendants breached” their restrictive covenants agreements and AssuredPartners “has presented evidence that the Individual Defendants attempted to solicit business from AssuredPartners’ clients in violation of the RCAs.
“And it is undisputed that certain of the Individual defendants contacted certain of AssuredPartners clients in the days following their departures.”
The court’s ruling provides that individual defendants must not solicit business from any “restricted” clients, who are defined as any clients of AssuredPartners at the office where individual defendants were employed during the two years preceding when the employees left.
AssuredPartners had no comment while Alliant and its attorneys did not respond to requests for comment.
