Napleton Automotive Group filed a lawsuit last week alleging a former general manager stole trade secrets and purloined employees on behalf of the dealership group for which he now works.
The lawsuit claims Garrett McDonald stole confidential information from Napleton Kia of Carmel in Indianapolis, where he was general manager until Feb. 14, and used it advantageously when he accepted the same position at Bob Rohrman Kia in Lafayette, Ind.
The suit, filed May 10 in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, also claims a Rohrman executive accepted information from McDonald. Bob Rohrman Automotive Group, which Napleton lists as one of its direct competitors in Indiana, is also named as a defendant.
“McDonald was encouraged and incentivized by the Rohrman Dealerships to raid the Napleton Carmel Dealerships of their experienced workers who held key dealership positions, such as managers … and the Rohrman Dealerships fully expected McDonald to hire away other employees of the Napleton Carmel Dealerships to work for the Rohrman Dealerships as well,” the lawsuit alleges.
McDonald worked in California before he was hired by Napleton Kia of Carmel in May 2020. Multiple employees he had worked with on the West Coast were also hired by the Kia store or one of the group’s other dealerships, according to the suit.
The lawsuit claims almost all of those employees left the Kia store without advance notice in February. Napleton Automotive blames that on an “aggressive raiding strategy” coordinated by McDonald and Trey Rohrman, who at the time was director of Rohrman Automotive’s dealership operations in Lafayette.
As general manager of Napleton Kia of Carmel, McDonald agreed to several confidentiality policies and was in charge of hiring all management positions, developing goals for different departments and overseeing several forms of dealership records, the suit claims.
Records to which McDonald had access included account and sales plans, financial information, benchmarks, merchandising and stocking strategies, marketing information, customer account information and documentation, and product information, according to the suit.
Before he resigned, McDonald shared confidential information with Trey Rohrman about Napleton’s business practices, the lawsuit alleges, including customer lists and financial information.
In emails, McDonald called Trey Rohrman “boss” and made comments about the information he was forwarding, including, “This will be good comparison information for us,” the suit alleges.
The suit also says McDonald violated a noncompetition agreement he signed that forbade him from working for a competitor of the dealership for at least 12 months after employment with Napleton ended.
The suit claims that in the days before his resignation, McDonald met with employees at the Napleton dealership to discuss them also leaving for Rohrman Automotive.
In a phone call with Automotive News, McDonald denied Napleton’s allegations.
“We just moved for culture,” McDonald said. “We just went for a better culture, and we’re just hardworking American families.”
Trey Rohrman, who is now director of Rohrman Automotive’s operations in Indiana, declined to comment, as did the Rohrman group.
Napleton in its suit asked the court for damages in “an amount to be proven at trial.”
It also asked the court to issue a preliminary injunction barring McDonald and Rohrman Automotive from using or disclosing alleged confidential information.
Napleton Automotive, of Oakbrook Terrace, Ill., has 39 stores in six states. It ranks No. 13 on Automotive News’ list of the top 150 dealership groups based in the U.S., with retail sales of 35,768 new vehicles in 2020. Rohrman Automotive, of Arlington Heights, Ill., has 28 dealerships across the Midwest. It ranks No. 47, with retail sales of 18,467 new vehicles in 2020.