Dive Brief:
- A federal judge has issued a temporary restraining order, barring Amy Bricker, a former senior executive at Cigna, from joining competitor CVS Health.
- A Missouri federal judge sided with Cigna and said Bricker’s employment with CVS would violate her noncompete agreement with Cigna, where she served as president of the firm’s pharmacy benefits unit, Express Scripts.
- In an order issued last week, the judge said Cigna “would suffer irreparable harm absent a temporary injunction” and that it was “inevitable” Bricker would share or use Cigna’s trade secrets while at CVS.
Dive Insight:
The legal battle comes as the U.S. is seeking to ban noncompete arrangements that restrict employees from going to work for rivals. The sweeping proposal was released in January and seeks to not only ban future noncompetes but also invalidate existing ones.
Cigna filed a lawsuit against Bricker and CVS after it was announced she would be joining CVS in a newly created role. Bricker left months after Cigna’s Express Scripts beat out CVS’ Caremark to serve Centene’s 20 million customers.
Cigna alleged Bricker is in direct violation of a noncompete agreement she signed and is required of Cigna’s most senior executives. Only 16 active employees have noncompete agreements out of Cigna’s 70,000 employees, Cigna claims in its lawsuit against Bricker.
Bricker was “privy to the business’s most highly sensitive information” and could use that information in her new role when developing products and services in direct competition with the insurer, Cigna alleged.
But Bricker argued that her noncompete was overly broad in scope and length, according to court filings. She also alleged she does not posses any trade secrets and if she did they would be limited to Express Scripts. At CVS, she would be firewalled from the firm’s PBM, Caremark.