FriendFinder parent company Various has filed a civil suit in Santa Clara Superior Court against former employees Jack Mardack and Sean Barrett for breach of contract, misappropriation of trade secrets, and unjust enrichment, among other things.
The suit was filed April 27. Mardack, FriendFinder’s former affiliate manager, left the company on March 29 and started ProfitLAB with rival SexSearch.com on March 30. Barrett was employed as FriendFinder’s affiliate coordinator from September 22, 2004 and was terminated on March 29.
“We’re going to do discovery, but the allegations are, they are essentially taking for themselves traffic and transactions that belong to the company, using links that bring money to their own accounts. That’s money that’s corporate property and we’d like the court to enjoin them from doing that type of thing and we’d like to get our money back,” FriendFinder’s legal counsel Ira Rothken tells AVNOnline.com.
Mardack said the suit is without merit.
“It’s purely retaliatory and the extension of a previously established pattern that is in evidence with other people who have left the company that speaks of a level of paranoia. It’s a pattern of what I would consider hideous mistreatment of people who have done nothing more than said ‘I’m going to go and work somewhere else,’” Mardack says.
“I’ve never stolen, in any way, money from FriendFinder. In fact, my money motivation was a very small part of the picture. I’ve been aggressively recruited for extraordinary sums of money for a very long time.”
The suit specifically claims that Mardack stole a list of affiliates, something he refuted.
“Inevitably as one will do when one has a long-term business association with certain entities, [he] will enter into a friendship with a small number of affiliates. If you want to consider four or five telephone numbers on my cell phone speed dial as a list of affiliates or my having them as theft, I guess that’s for the law to decide,” he says.
Various also claims Mardack slandered them after he left the company.
No trial date has been set for the case. Rothken said a status conference would be held in the next 60 to 90 days, at which time the trial date will be set, unless the parties come to another resolution.
“FriendFinder is not litigious. It certainly wants to get its money back and get a remedy to have them stop it. There’s more than one way to do that. FriendFinder does not take this lightly. It will go all the way through trial if need be. If the defendants are interested in giving back the money and stopping their conduct, certainly that would go a long way toward resolving the claims,” Rothken says.
Barrett, who is now employed by Mardack at ProfitLAB, could not be reached for comment.
To view the summons, click " \n target="_new">here.
