Judge Seals Suit Against Armor All

A Superior Court judge, dealing a blow to a former Armor All Products Corp. employee, sealed the records Tuesday in the worker’s wrongful-termination case and ordered him to pay $6,215 of the company’s legal fees and return tires and other documents he took.

Judge Paul M. Bryant Jr., siding with the Aliso Viejo-based maker of car care products, blocked former Armor All research manager Pritam S. Dhaliwal from using his lawsuit to reveal what the company considers to be trade secrets.

In a lawsuit filed in November in San Bernardino County Superior Court, Dhaliwal accused Armor All of covering up internal findings suggesting that the company’s products, including its leading Armor All Protectant product, cause tires and air bag covers to weaken and crack.

Last month, the company sought to seal confidential documents in the court case and obtain sanctions against Dhaliwal for violating a confidentiality agreement he had with the company. It also requested a return of documents and material in Dhaliwal’s possession.

On Tuesday, Bryant ordered that “the entire court file in this case shall be kept under seal, and any material filed in this case shall be filed under seal.” He also ordered Dhaliwal to return about 500 pages of Armor All documents and about 25 tires that Dhaliwal said the company had ordered him to destroy.

“Today, Armor All got everything they wanted. They can cloak this case in secrecy from now on,” said John C. McCarthy of Claremont, Dhaliwal’s attorney.

Armor All hailed the judge’s move, saying he was preserving valuable company trade secrets.

“We got what we asked for,” said William Bottger of Los Angeles, the company’s attorney. “We have nothing to conceal here; we just don’t want our confidential trade secrets getting to our competitors.”

In his lawsuit, Dhaliwal said he found in tests performed by him and others that Armor All Protectant caused tire walls and vinyl surfaces in cars to break down and crack more rapidly than they would without the treatments. In addition, he said, Armor All Tires Foam could reduce braking power by weakening the tread of worn or used tires.

Dhaliwal accused the company of continuing to sell the products despite his warnings. He was dismissed in February, 1994, when Armor All switched its research testing to an outside laboratory.

While he contends that he was wrongly fired, the company said he was fired for “performance reasons.”