FNG Exclusive… FNG has learned that James Sorenson, the former ThinkMarkets employee who moved to rival ISAM Capital Markets Group and was then sued by ThinkMarkets, has filed a response in United States District Court, Northern District of Illinois Eastern Division.

FNG has viewed court documents which provide Mr. Sorenson’s response, and asks for the court to dismiss the lawsuit against him. He starts out by calling ThinkMarkets’ lawsuit a “fishing expedition” filed by a “litigious disgruntled former employer” against its former employee, because he left to work for a competitor.

The Sorenson response also points out that he is in fact being picked on because ThinkMarkets and his new employer, ISAM Group, are not just competitors but are locked in a legal battle themselves. In that separate tiff, ISAM is suing ThinkMarkets in UK court (as well as in the US), claiming that ThinkMarkets is not sending its trades to ISAM group units for execution, as part of an exclusivity clause which was part of ThinkMarkets’ 2017 sale of its B2B arm ThinkLiquidity to ISAM, to form ISAM unit IS Risk Analytics.

As we reported last month, ThinkMarkets has sued James Sorenson who resigned from the company in October 2020 and then went to work for ISAM. ThinkMarkets’ suit claims (among other things) that Mr. Sorenson had multiple emails with confidential, sensitive information that he had no legitimate reason to possess; deleted an IT repository in a proprietary application that stored proprietary code doing harm to the business; and, he didn’t return ThinkMarkets’ property after leaving when asked to do so.

In his response, Mr. Sorenson states that ThinkMarkets failed to present any allegations of actual wrongdoing by him. Instead, they rely on speculation and demand Sorenson “return” property they do not plausibly allege that he actually possesses. The demand to return property follows a letter sent by ThinkMarkets to Sorenson approximately four months ago, in which ThinkMarkets themselves asked Sorenson to delete anything of theirs that he might have – so, how could he possibly return something he was asked by the company to delete? He also notes that ThinkMarkets omitted to include that correspondence in their original lawsuit.

James Sorenson worked in various IT positions at ThinkMarkets, most recently as a Senior Network Architect. His primary responsibilities involved network engineering, security, and architecture roles, and assisting in developing the company’s systems and applications. Regarding the supposed sensitive emails found in his inbox when he left the company, Sorenson stated that first of all, ThinkMarkets retains exclusive control and access over Sorenson’s network activity and work email inbox because Sorenson’s user access was terminated around the time of his resignation.

Secondly, ThinkMarkets used Microsoft Office 365 email for Sorenson’s company email. Office 365 offers anti-spam policies that can send emails “to other recipients instead of the intended recipients.” Indeed, ThinkMarkets admits that Sorenson’s job duties included network engineering, security, and that he purportedly had “indirect security access to every email account” in their system. Sorenson’s job duties required security access to emails and he states that these “sensitive” emails may likely have come to his inbox via a security or spam rule or filter, in his role as a network admin. He further noted that this is particularly true given that the emails came from outside ThinkMarkets’ organization and involved international topics – frequent flags for a spam filter. In its lawsuit, ThinkMarkets asserted that these emails appeared in Sorenson’s inbox because of his own “malicious purposes,” which as described above Sorenson says is a baseless claim.

Regarding ThinkMarkets claims that Mr. Sorenson deleted code before he left, Mr. Sorenson stated that the day before he resigned (October 2) Sorenson informed his manager, Scott Dunlavey, of his intent to resign because of his opportunity with IS Group. Sorenson and Dunlavey coordinated to transfer all source code, documentation, and all other relevant information to ensure they were accessible to other team members in preparation for Sorenson’s resignation, including a phone-call with team members to assist in the hand-off of Sorenson’s responsibilities. Sorenson confirmed with Dunlavey that the team was prepared for his resignation and had everything they needed, and then Sorenson deleted any of ThinkMarkets’ material stored on his personal computer, as instructed, since he used his own personal computer for work at ThinkMarkets.

Sorenson says he continued to offer assistance to Dunlavey and the rest of the team with transitional questions even after his resignation.

In asking the court to dismiss the lawsuit outright, James Sorenson said that although ThinkMarkets have investigated and forensically examined Sorenson’s inbox and network activity, they have offered no substantive allegations of actual wrongdoing – opting instead to “sue first and ask questions later”. Sorenson reiterated that he worked with his direct supervisor, Dunlavey, to manage the transition following his resignation. He noted that ThinkMarkets’ response to his “peaceful transition” was a baseless, five count lawsuit. ThinkMarkets’ allegations that Sorenson breached his agreement with the company, misappropriated trade secrets, and breached his fiduciary duty to them are based on pure speculation and conjecture by ThinkMarkets which “holds all the information”, yet failed to satisfy the requisite legal standards to adequately state a claim.

We will continue to follow this story as it develops.