How to conspire, and when –

In the course of affirming a substantial judgment for misappropriation of trade secrets, the Fifth Circuit made an interesting observation in a footnote about liability for civil conspiracy under Texas law: “For instance, [Defendant] argues he is entitled to judgment on the conspiracy to misappropriate claim because such a claim is barred by Texas’ intra-corporate conspiracy doctrine, i.e., that a corporation and its employees cannot conspire with each other in carrying out a company’s business. He has presented no case applying it to the instant situation, where the conspiracy predated even the creation of the company at issue. Here, [Defendant] stole [Plaintiff’s] trade secrets months before the creation of SXP, and the creation and operation of SXP was the means by which the conspiracy was carried out.” Quantlab Technologies v. Kuharsky, No. 16-20242 (June 22, 2017, unpublished).