EquipmentShare sues former employees over alleged ‘short shelling’

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

A publicly traded company based in Columbia has sued some of its former employees over allegations of “short selling.”

EquipmentShare filed a federal lawsuit on Monday accusing 10 “Jane and John Does” of misappropriating trade secrets and breach of contract.

The lawsuit alleges the former employees sold company information when they spoke with Umibozu’ Research, which wrote multiple articles that were critical of the company.

EquipmentShare alleges Umibōzu’ reports “are not journalism” and refer to them as “trading tools that Umibōzu and its financial backers use to manufacture a sudden wave of negative market sentiment about a target company as part of a sophisticated, self-interested trading strategy.”

The lawsuit does not identify the alleged former employees and claims EquipmentShare will eventually identify them.

“EquipmentShare reasonably expects to identify the individual Defendants by comparing its own personnel, access, and systems records, including records showing which current and former employees had access to the specific information described in Section D, with narrowly defined, nonprivileged records concerning the communications with Umibōzu,” the lawsuit says.