Rubicon fires employee at center of lawsuit

Atlanta-basedRubicon Global LLC has released a statement that it has terminated the employment of Jonathan Dewitt out of “an abundance of caution.”

A lawsuit was brought against Dewitt and Rubicon in June by Waste Connections, The Woodlands, Texas, and its subsidiary Progressive Waste Solutions of LA (PWS), which accused Dewitt of downloading thousands of pages worth of confidential documents prior to his resignation from PWS in March. He subsequently went to work for Rubicon. 

The suit, filed in Georgia court, also accuses Rubicon of “interfering with Waste Connections’ contracts and customer relationships and seeks to convert Waste Connections’ customers to Rubicon Services through unlawful means.”

Rubicon denies it had any knowledge of Dewitt’s alleged actions and provided an official statement to Waste Today:

"Allegations were recently brought against Rubicon Global and a newly hired employee by his former employer, Waste Connections. The allegations claimed that the employee improperly handled Waste Connections’ intellectual property and confidential information upon joining our company.  

"Rubicon strongly denies that it had knowledge of these actions. Although the hiring of the employee was entirely appropriate and Rubicon took appropriate steps to ensure no confidential or proprietary information of Waste Connections would be used, out of an abundance of caution Rubicon has decided to terminate the employee.

"Data security is extremely important to us – and for our customers, for our hauler partners and for our employees. We protect their data and respect the confidential information and intellectual property of our competitors and other companies in our industry. We take any potential risks to such security or the intellectual property of third parties very seriously, and we will continue defending Rubicon's actions in this matter."