Wall Street Journal
By Ann Zimmerman
A fired Wal-Mart Stores Inc. employee has filed suit against the retailer alleging the company is harassing him in attempting to force him back to an Arkansas court, as part of a four-year-old trade-secret-violation case.
The big retailer is pursuing contempt-of-court charges against Bruce Gabbard, a former computer-security specialist at Wal-Mart, who used to live in Arkansas but has since moved to Oklahoma. In a filing last week in the District Court of Oklahoma County, lawyers for Mr. Gabbard contend that Wal-Mart's real reason for pursuing those charges is to force him to sign a non-disclosure agreement and "chill" his right to free speech and to pursue a career.
Mr. Gabbard argued against his being returned to Arkansas and added a counterclaim accusing Wal-Mart of abuse of process.
Wal-Mart said in an interview that it has credible evidence that Mr. Gabbard still has confidential Wal-Mart information in violation of a temporary restraining order issued by a Benton County, Ark., circuit court judge in 2007 and a permanent injunction issued the following year.
"All we are asking is that Mr. Gabbard comply with the court's order requiring that he turn over our confidential files," said Wal-Mart spokesman Greg Rossiter.
Mr. Gabbard, a former member of Wal-Mart's Threat Research and Analysis team, was fired by the company in early 2007 for monitoring phone conversations between a New York Times reporter and Wal-Mart employees and for intercepting pager communications. Mr. Gabbard later divulged to The Wall Street Journal how Wal-Mart snooped on employees, critics and stockholders. He also shared information about the board's discussion, overheard on a surveillance system, to possibly settle a huge sex discrimination suit and the company's secret plan to boost its stock price by spinning off Sam's Club, called Project Red.
In the spring of 2007, Wal-Mart got a temporary restraining order against Mr. Gabbard preventing him from further leaking confidential company information. In addition, Mr. Gabbard was ordered to turn over to the Benton County, Ark., prosecutor's office two computer hard drives the retailer believed held Wal-Mart documents.
A permanent injunction the following summer ordered Mr. Gabbard to relinquish any Wal-Mart trade-secret information he still possessed.
Both Wal-Mart, which is based in Bentonville, Ark., and Mr. Gabbard said they thought at that point the matter was behind them. But in November 2009, Wal-Mart went back to court and persuaded a judge that Mr. Gabbard still had confidential company documents, in part because in 2008 he told a former Wal-Mart employee about a computer breach there.
When Mr. Gabbard didn't show up for a hearing on the matter, the judge found him in contempt. Mr. Gabbard, who was living in South Carolina then, said he was given just three days' notice of the hearing, and had no money and no lawyer. "And I was suspicious of Wal-Mart's heavy-handedness," said Mr. Gabbard, who now runs information-technology systems for a small Oklahoma City company.
In April, Mr. Gabbard was served with a summons asking Oklahoma authorities to hold Mr. Gabbard so a Benton County sheriff could bring him to Arkansas to answer the civil contempt charges, according to Mr. Gabbard's attorney, David Massey.
The judge also found Mr. Gabbard's wife Shawn in contempt for not showing up for a deposition in the case, according to court filings. Mrs. Gabbard said she never received notice of the hearing on the contempt charge, according to court documents.
Wal-Mart thinks Mr. Gabbard still has company documents based on postings he made on his website as recently as a month ago and on a forensics investigation of the computers Mr. Gabbard turned over to authorities that allegedly show he copied information before surrendering the hardware, according to two people close to the company.
The retailer believes those documents are the basis of an October 2009, "Wired" magazine story detailing a massive data breach at Wal-Mart in 2005. Wired didn't return a call seeking comment.
Mr. Gabbard's lawyer said there's no basis for Wal-Mart's suspicions. "Bruce has no documents acquired prior to him signing the 2008" permanent injunction," said Mr. Massey.
Mr. Massey contends that any Wal-Mart documents Mr. Gabbard might have obtained after he left Wal-Mart aren't covered by the temporary restraining order or the permanent injunction
