Agency Barred From ‘Raids’

The new advertising agency started by former officers of Lord Geller Federico Einstein Inc. has been temporarily prohibited from accepting any more employees or clients from Lord Geller.

Judge Herman Cahn of the state Supreme Court made the ruling on Thursday, extending an April 6 order that barred two of the new agency’s founders, Richard Lord and Arthur Einstein Jr., from recruiting Lord Geller clients or staff for the new agency, Lord Einstein O’Neill & Partners.

But the ruling does not affect employees or clients who have already made the switch. The judge said the order will remain in effect until a court hearing later this month. No specific date was set.

Six top executives walked off their jobs at Lord Geller on March 18 to form the agency, complaining that they felt constrained under the ownership of WPP Group PLC, the British firm that bought Lord Geller in its purchase of JWT Group Inc. in July, 1987.

They have been joined by several dozen former Lord Geller employees at the new agency.

Two Lord Geller clients, New Yorker magazine and WNBC-TV, said they were switching to the new agency and a third client, International Business Machines Corp., said it was assigning some short-term projects to the new agency.

WPP filed suit against the former executives, charging they breached their duties to the agency and conspired to take away business. WPP had requested that the judge expand his April 6 order to apply to the agency as well as to Lord and Einstein.