Amicus Victory for COSAL in Scharpf v. General Dynamics Corp.
An order was handed down today by the Fourth Circuit in Scharpf v. General Dynamics Corp. (E.D. Va. 1:23-cv-01372-AJT-WEF) - a case involving a no-poach agreement between naval engineering firms which plaintiffs alleged was carried out as a “gentleman’s agreement” for which the defendants scrupulously avoided leaving a paper trail. The District Court granted motion to dismiss on statute of limitations grounds, finding that there were no affirmative acts of concealment that would trigger tolling the statute of limitations. COSAL wrote in support of plaintiffs on appeal, arguing that the lower court’s decision betrayed the purpose of tolling based on fraudulent concealment, and would immunize a broad category of no-poach and wage fixing violations where the defendants were savvy enough to conduct the conspiracy via methods that do not leave documentary evidence.
The Fourth Circuit reversed and remanded (with one Judge dissenting), concluding that “neither logic nor our precedent supports distinguishing between defendants who destroy evidence of their conspiracy and defendants who carefully avoid creating evidence in the first place.”
The COSAL brief was written by Tony Stauber and Bailey Twyman-Metzger of Gustafson Gluek, with help from Dave Cialkowski.
