The Arcata Community Recycling Center has filed suit against the Humboldt Waste Management Authority, alleging that, as reported by the Courthouse News Service, the HWMA “tricked it into allowing the public trash district to do a ‘comprehensive study’ of its business, then disclosed trade secrets to competitors, driving down the value of the business, so the defendant could pick it up on the cheap at a foreclosure sale.”
As reported earlier on this blog, the ACRC has announced it will shut down its operations in January.
According to the CNS story, the ACRC is seeking punitive damages “for civil rights violations, taking property without just compensation, interference with prospective economic advantage, negligent and intentional misrepresentation, misappropriation of trade secrets, and improper award of public contract.”
And it wants the Willits company that outbid it to be dumped.
The CNS story also provides this link to the complaint, which was filed Oct. 24 in Humboldt County Superior Court.
This article appears in in Karuk.
Paragraph 55 of the complaint alleges that ACRC developed trade recycling secrets that it worked to keep confidential.
If this is true, why should ANYONE treat ACRC as important to the success of recycling?
Being as there are 35 employees being laid off through this massive and expensive closure, business owners in the community should consider contacting these employees for employment asap!
1) Mitch, ALL businesses have trade secrets! Use your brain for a moment and think if you would like competitors to know where your company would be vulnerable or incapable to conduct business.
2) HWMA is about as corrupt as everything else in Humboldt, so this type of “business practice” shouldn’t surprise anyone.
Non profits generally have missions that go beyond making money. ACRC has long told us that they deserve our support because they work so hard for recycling in general.
Yes, businesses are entitled to keep trade secrets. But a non-profit that hides ways to reduce the cost of recycling, as opposed to going out of its way to publish them, is simply not fulfilling its mission.
Unfortunately, that behavior is no longer entirely rare in the non-profit world, where non-profit status is now sometimes simply a tax strategy and the motivations are as selfish as in any for-profit business.
If the trade secret were something like a customer list, that’s one thing. But the complaint written by ACRC itself alleges otherwise.
As merely a community resident, i don’t think I’ll ever really understand what happened here. Maybe I’d have an idea if I’d attended all the public meetings of HWMA or have personal relationships with some of the players involved. But I don’t.
The media rumor is that Jim Test dislikes Mark Loughmiller and schemed to get rid of him. I don’t know if that’s so, but it seems credible in a small community where there’s a fair chance for people to successfully pursue personal animosities and petty ambitions
@NAN: I suspect it has more to do with dollars and cents. Here’s a story we did last year on some of the background.
Let’s see. ACRC had some big secret that gave them special insight on how to recycle. This secret allowed them to bid $73/ton more than another company. Doesn’t sound like the secret is worth vary much! What is even worse is that after they found out they were not the only bidder, as they anticipated, they came back and said they could do it at no cost, still $8/ton more than Willits. These guys are not playing with a full deck and are not being honest with the public.