Arxada Wins $50 Million on Noncompete Breaches, Deleted Evidence

Arxada Holdings NA Inc. won a greater than $50 million court decision Wednesday over noncompete breaches by the founder of a business it bought for $450 million.

A Delaware Chancery Court judge ruled for the specialty chemicals company, handing down $25.1 million each in compensatory and punitive damages—plus legal fees—against Mike Harvey, two nephews, and their affiliates. They violated restrictive covenants and misappropriated trade secrets by downloading “massive amounts of information"—some of which Harvey destroyed before trial—and using it to start a rival enterprise, Vice Chancellor J. Travis Laster found.

Harvey’s “misappropriation was also malicious,” Laster said in a 100-page ...