A federal judge has granted a temporary injunction against a former Cigna executive who jumped ship to competitor CVS Health.
Missouri Judge Ronnie White granted the temporary restraining order late last week while the court navigates a final ruling in the case. Cigna filed suit against former Express Scripts President Amy Bricker and CVS in late January after Bricker left the company to take an executive role at CVS.
Under the order, Bricker cannot provide any services to CVS that would compete with Cigna directly and cannot take the role of chief product officer for consumer health. She is also barred from divulging any of Cigna's corporate secrets to CVS while the injunction is in place.
Cigna will pay $250,000 in security to cover damages to Bricker should it bear out that the order was wrongfully issued, according to the court.
White wrote in the order that the evidence points to Cigna suffering "irreparable harm" without the injunction in place, given the wealth of knowledge Bricker has on the company and its strategic initiatives.
"A temporary restraining order is necessary and proper in light of the balance between that irreparable harm to Cigna, the relatively less-significant harm that the temporary injunction may inflict on Defendant Bricker and the public interest in the enforcement of reasonable covenants, especially as the agreements Defendant Bricker signed prohibited her from providing services to a competitor such as CVS Pharmacy or using or disclosing Cigna’s confidential and trade secret information, for which she received significant compensation," White wrote.
In its complaint, Cigna said that Bricker, as one of the company's top executives, was one of just 16 employees of nearly 70,000 total who was under a noncompete agreement, as she was one of the 15 highest-paid executives at the company.
Cigna argued that she would "inevitably" be asked to reveal trade secrets in her new job at CVS and noted she was privy to a number of key initiatives at the company. For example, as the president of Express Scripts, Bricker played an integral role in preparing the pharmacy benefit manager's pitch to Centene to secure that lucrative contract.
Centene ditched CVS' Caremark PBM for Express Scripts in a contract that brought 20 million new members into the fold.