AUSTIN, MINN. — Hormel Foods Corp. filed a lawsuit against competitor Johnsonville LLC and two former employees — Brett Sims and Jeremy Rummel — for allegedly stealing trade secrets.

The complaint, filed with the Minnesota District Court on June 18, claims that Johnsonville onboarded former Hormel employees in an effort to “interfere with Hormel’s employment relationships and obtain Hormel’s confidential, proprietary and trade secret information.”

Both key players in the sausage market, Hormel and Johnsonville compete for the same customers and end consumers, the complaint noted.

In 2023, Johnsonville hired Sims, then-director of operations at Hormel. Sims had previously been with Hormel since 1991.

Not long after joining the Johnsonville team, Sims allegedly “began soliciting Hormel employees in blatant disregard of the contractual non-solicitation obligations he owed to Hormel and his contractual obligation to share these covenants with Johnsonville,” Hormel Foods said.

The complaint contended that Sims’ campaign was responsible for the hiring of at least three other Hormel employees — Rummel, Hormel’s director of operations, with a focus on sausage products; Brandon Koehler, Hormel’s plant manager and former product manufacturing manager; and Alison Koehler, Hormel’s senior finance manager.

Aside from solicitation of its team members, Hormel alleges that Johnsonville captured insider secrets through its employees.

After Rummel had accepted employment from Johnsonville but before he notified Hormel of his intention to resign, he allegedly began forwarding sensitive confidential information to his personal email account, specifically product formulas, processing procedures, acquisition target information and marketing strategy information.

“The only reasonable interpretation of Rummel’s actions is that, in sending Hormel confidential business information and trade secrets to his personal email account immediately prior to beginning competitive business activities with Johnsonville, Rummel was attempting to take Hormel’s confidential business information and trade secrets to Johnsonville for the express purpose of exploiting the information for Johnsonville’s benefit, and to Hormel’s detriment, in the marketplace,” Hormel wrote in the complaint.

Both Sims and Rummel were noted by Hormel to have signed non-disclosure agreements.

When Hormel discovered Rummel had been sending information to his personal email, the company interviewed Rummel and asked for forensic examination of his cell phone.

Rummel was soon after fired for breach of the company’s code of conduct.

That same day, Hormel sought out a number of assurances from Johnsonville, but Johnsonville “refused to adequately provide the assurances reasonably requested by Hormel,” the complaint said.

Hormel is now seeking a trial by jury for relief from damages due to a breach in contracts and for the return of all proprietary information.