Restoration Hardware is suing Crate & Barrel, its CEO Douglas Diemoz and a food and beverage manager, Kimberly Ahlheim, both of whom are former RH employees, according to a notice to the plaintiff filed by RH with the Superior Court of California, County of San Francisco.
Ahlheim was RH director of food and beverage, and just recently moved over to Crate & Barrel, while Diemoz was chief development officer at RH until July 2015, according to LinkedIn.
According to the website Law360.com, key issues in the case include RH’s accusation that Crate & Barrel has been poaching its managers to bolster growth prospects and that Diemoz and Ahlheim unlawfully acquired and transferred proprietary information while violating contractual obligations to Restoration Hardware.
The RH suit focuses on Crate & Barrel’s development of a food and beverage strategy, which it claims leverages knowledge Ahlheim gained at Restoration Hardware.
