MMA Alleges Broker Patriot Poached 11 Surety Team Members

Marsh & McLennan Agency has filed suit against brokerage Patriot Growth Insurance Services and eight former members of a surety team over an alleged poaching scheme.

Filed early June in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and since remanded to state court, the lawsuit names former employees Keith Wallace Harrelson, Ryan McClendon, Albert Bowen Evans, Jeffrey Cutshall, Rebecca Burrus, Hailee Wesson, Hunter Harper, and Jennifer Barranco—who had each worked at MMA’s Birmingham, Alabama office.

The group made up about half of the surety team in Birmingham, said MMA, and most resigned on May 18 by leaving letters on top of their laptops and cellphones, according to the lawsuit. During the days that followed, Barranco resigned as did two others from the team, Michelle Hicks and Kayla Loyd. Eleven in total resigned to join Patriot, doing business under the brand Turner Insurance & Bonding Co., MMA alleged.

Each defendant is in violation of employment contracts, said MMA, which pointed out in the suit that several of them immediately filed for declaratory judgement in Alabama to make their MMA agreements unenforceable.

Since the team left, MMA said it has received no fewer than 71 broker-of-record documents transferring clients to Patriot, resulting in at least $3.5 million of lost annually recurring revenue by May 22. MMA alleged some of the defendants, before their resignations, talked or met with clients to let them in on their plan to join Patriot.

In the suit MMA alleged Patriot “encouraged and facilitated” the departure of MMA’s employees. MMA claimed Patriot had a limited presence in Birmingham but “rather than developing its own operations organically, Patriot engaged in a targeted and systematic effort to solicit MMA’s employees to unlawfully poach them and MMA’s clients.”

MMA said each defendant, with the exception of Harper, worked at J. Smith Lanier & Co., which merged with MMA early in 2017. All defendants signed non-solicitation and confidentiality agreements upon the merger, as did Harper when he joined MMA in 2021, the broker said in the lawsuit.

Patriot said it could not comment on the lawsuit.

Temporary Restraining Order

According to court documents, the individual defendants are enjoined and temporarily restrained from violating their MMA employment contracts. This includes soliciting or inducing MMA clients whom they had contact with as MMA employees, or soliciting MMA employees to leave. The defendants are required to return property containing confidential information or trade secrets, and they cannot disseminate any of the material, the court ruled.