Janitorial Firm Wins Spy Suit Against Rival

A Los Angeles Superior Court jury returned a $2-million verdict Thursday against one of the largest janitorial services in the Southland which planted an executive inside a competitor’s firm to disrupt operations and woo clients.

The jury determined that Premier Building Maintenance and its owners, Eric Johnson and Vince Sutton, engaged in unfair competition and misappropriated the trade secrets of Advance Building Maintenance and its owners, George Vallen and Forrest Nolin.

The defendants will seek a new trial “because the evidence does not support the findings of the jury,” their attorney, Michael Stevens, said.

“We absolutely didn’t do it,” Sutton said after the verdict, which included $800,000 in punitive damages.

The trial was an inside look at what was called “the cutthroat competition” among the more than 250 firms vying to clean the commercial buildings of Los Angeles.

In the three-week trial, which would have done a spy novel justice, witnesses testified that janitors, working as “moles,” were instructed to leave office doors unlocked for thieves, to not provide toilet paper in rest rooms, to smear grease on mirrors and to not clean the offices of corporate presidents.

The object, Vallen and Nolin testified, was to sabotage their firm’s job sites so that customers would switch to Premier.

“This case is about greed,” Advance attorney Allan Browne told the jury.

Nolin, who said Advance grosses about $9 million a year, maintained that the company lost accounts worth $1.3 million to Premier.

Nolin said he and Vallen started the business 18 years ago and built it into one of the top 10 of its kind in the area, with more than 550 employees cleaning offices of such big-name firms as Mattell Toys, Fox Plaza and Toyota’s world headquarters.

Advance hired Johnson and Sutton in the early 1980s, Nolin said, and both eventually became company vice presidents.

However, the two men left and started their own business, taking with them client account information that enabled them to later make lower bids for service, Nolin testified. He also asserted that an operations director, who had worked for Advance for 10 years, aided Premier by hiring relatives and friends, and then ordering them to do bad work or mess up offices. The operations man eventually became a member of Premier’s board of directors.

When the clients became unhappy with the work of Advance, Premier would “appear at the door” with a lower bid, Nolin testified. “They made sure that they generated what we call in the business ‘killer complaints,’ ” Nolin said.

“You can forget to dust, you can miss a trash can or two in a building, but you can never forget the toilet paper or to clean the president’s office,” Nolin testified.

However, Johnson and Sutton, who took over 17 former accounts of Advance, testified that they became one of the top 10 janitorial firms in the city through business savvy, hard work, better cleaning techniques and lower rates.

The defense called a dozen building managers, who testified that they approached Premier, not vice versa.

Premier “adamantly denied” employing a “mole,” noting that the operations director quit Advance before becoming a member of the board. The man in question did not testify at the trial because he is now living in Guatemala.

Jury foreman David Tomaya said the jury was swayed in favor of Advance by detailed testimony about the “dirty tricks,” and the fact that the operations manager was listed as an officer on a Premier prospectus while still employed by Advance.

Tomaya, an engineer, said panel members were surprised that the janitorial business was so fascinating.

“I didn’t know there was so much to it,” he said.