
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 28, 1993                   TAG: 9307280187
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

TRADE SECRETS SUIT DISMISSED

A federal judge found Tuesday that a Salem woman did not violate trade secret acts or conspire against her former employer when she went to work for a Taiwan manufacturing company.

Related claims that went to a jury also were dismissed.

Sequence Limited, a Durham, N.C., marketing broker, had made the allegations in a federal lawsuit against Barbara Smith, who once worked in the company's Salem office.

Some of the allegations were dismissed by a judge and others by a jury Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Roanoke, according to Ray Robrecht, Smith's attorney.

Sequence served as a middleman between SDI, a Taiwan manufacturer of industrial knives, and Hyde Manufacturing of Massachusetts, one of its customers.

Hyde and SDI decided to eliminate Sequence from their business dealings shortly before Smith went to work for SDI, Robrecht said.

Robrecht said there was no evidence to back Sequence's additional claims that Smith breached her fiduciary duties and misappropriated money. The jury apparently agreed - dismissing those allegations after Judge Sam Wilson threw out other charges.

"The fact that they eliminated the middleman is not an unlawful thing," Robrecht said. "It's an economic move."

The trial lasted two days and included testimony from SDI executives who traveled from Taiwan.\

by CNB