Union Home Mortgage is accusing a Georgia-based married couple of thwarting their noncompete settlement by taking confidential shopper data to her new employer.
According to the criticism, Nathan Duce and Rachel Duce, who beforehand labored at UHM as a department supervisor and mortgage officer respectively, took buyer data from the Ohio-based lender and used it to conduct enterprise at American Pacific Mortgage.
A drop in Nathan Duce’s manufacturing quantity after his spouse’s departure led to the invention that he was reportedly forwarding borrower data to his partner. She left UHM to work at APM in May.
“Union Home’s overview of Mr. Duce’s Union Home e mail account revealed that Mr. Duce was sending confidential data to each his and Mrs. Duce’s private e mail after Mrs. Duce left Union Home,” the swimsuit claims. Following the invention, Nathan Duce was terminated from his function on the agency.
The American Pacific location that Rachel Duce transitioned to is simply 17 miles away from the department she was working at in Georgia, the litigation says. Since then, she has originated no less than one mortgage that was with a buyer beforehand with UHM.
Per a noncompete settlement signed by the couple with Union Home, a “restricted interval” prevented them from instantly or not directly soliciting or diverging enterprise from any buyer of Union Home for one 12 months. Noncompetes are utilized by some mortgage lenders to stop prime producing department managers and producers from leaping ship.
The swimsuit claims APM, which can also be a defendant within the case, knew of Duce’s contractual obligations to Union Home, however ignored them.
Union Home Mortgage and American Pacific Mortgage didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark Friday.
The Ohio-based lender is asking an Ohio federal courtroom to problem a preliminary after which everlasting injunction requiring the couple to comply with their noncompete agreements with Union Home.
Rachel Duce continues to be employed with American Pacific, whereas Nathan Duce is at present not sponsored by any agency, a verify of the Nationwide Multistate Licensing System reveals.
Union Home Mortgage has been on a tear, rising its headcount, including groups of originators, and buying different corporations — but it surely’s additionally moved to guard its property by means of litigation.
In latest months, UHM introduced {that a} group of 16, led by top-performing originators Ravi Patel and Justin Allen, could be becoming a member of its Cincinnati workplace. It additionally nabbed Houston-based Nations Reliable Lending, including a billion-dollar origination enterprise to its bigger operations.
UHM was based in 1970 and operates consumer-direct, retail and wholesale companies along with servicing its personal loans. It has 886 sponsored LOs, in keeping with public data, and is among the many nation’s largest impartial mortgage financial institution lenders.
This is no less than the second swimsuit filed the place former Union Home staff moved over to American Pacific and allegedly broke noncompete agreements.
A swimsuit filed in March accuses 9 of its former staff for breaching quite a few agreements, together with a noncompete contract. The litigation, additionally filed in an Ohio federal courtroom, comes after eight managers and one mortgage officer, primarily based on the East Coast, transitioned to American Pacific Mortgage. All of the workers have been sure by noncompete clauses that prevented them from working for rivals for a time frame.
