This article was originally published here by The Dallas Morning News

— by Dana Branham

With a little under two weeks before a lawsuit he filed years earlier was set to go to trial, John Rogers penned an unusual letter to the judge handling the case.

In May last year, the Richardson business owner asked a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit accusing his former employees of stealing company secrets, after he says he received "a clear message from God" urging him to be generous.

When the thought hit him, Rogers said, he was at a Christian weekend retreat focusing on generosity.

“I was kind of shocked with the enormity of what God was essentially asking me to give up,” Rogers said. “Frankly, I was troubled by it.”

Attorneys on both sides of the lawsuit said the letter was unlike anything they’d seen in their time practicing law. But each believed that had the case made it to trial, their side would have prevailed.

Rogers' lawsuit, filed in federal court in June 2017, accused Sigma Drilling Technologies of using proprietary information owned by his oilfield supply company, Performance Pulsation Control, to form a competing business.

The lawsuit was dismissed with prejudice — meaning Rogers and his attorney can’t decide later to bring it back to court — after U.S. District Judge Amos L. Mazzant III signed an order May 9, according to court records.

Greg Ziegler, who represented Sigma in the case, said in a written statement that his clients believed Rogers dropped the lawsuit to avoid “the embarrassment of a stinging defeat at trial.”

“As for the reasons the Plaintiff claims were his motivation to dismiss his case, only God knows the truth of a man’s heart,” Ziegler wrote.

His clients weren’t surprised to see the request from Rogers to dismiss the lawsuit — or his letter to the judge, he said. They expected all along that the case would end up voluntarily dismissed by Rogers’ company before trial.

“That doesn’t mean that they’re not very pleased that PPC went ahead and decided to do it, because it’s in the best interests of both parties,” Ziegler said. “Particularly if you’re a business, it’s better to conduct that business in the marketplace than in the courtroom.”

Ziegler said his clients deny that they used trade secrets that belonged to Performance Pulsation Control.

“In fact, it's my clients' contention that PPC indeed has no trade secrets,” he said.

But Rogers and his attorney said the decision to move on from the lawsuit had nothing to do with a lack of confidence, and in Rogers' letter to the judge, he wrote that dropping the lawsuit isn't an "admission that PPC has done anything wrong in pursuing" the case.

“As ... [Rogers’] counsel, we were prepared and extremely optimistic about our chances associated with the trial in this case,” attorney John Palter said.

Rogers said his mind was still swirling when he left the Christian retreat in Atlanta to head home. He started writing notes on the flight back, trying to understand what he felt he was being asked to do.

When he arrived home, he talked with his company's general manager and his wife, and when he was sure he wanted to drop the lawsuit, he called Palter.

After that call, Rogers said he felt peace.

“I slept better that night than I had in a long time,” he said. “Not only did I have a sense of peace, I had a sense of joy.”

The lawsuit was costly for both parties. Rogers said his decision to drop the lawsuit came after he’d spent more than $500,000 in legal expenses.

And it was expensive for the defendants and their business, too, Ziegler said.

“It is a financial burden on any company to have to endure the litigation process,” he said. “Whether you’re a Fortune 500 company or you’re a startup, it’s an unpleasant place to be.”

——

[Special thanks to Smiley N. Pool from The Dallas Morning News for the cover photo]