Lyft accuses former COO of stealing confidential documents for Uber

The two giants in the transportation industry, Lyft and Uber, are at war. The latest salvo has seen the former taking its recently departed COO Travis VanderZanden to court for breach of confidentially and fiduciary duty. VanderZanden recently left Lyft for Uber.

Lyft, in a complaint filed in San Francisco Superior Court, claims that VanderZanden downloaded a number of non-public company documents to his personal Dropbox account before he exited the company. The documents included confidential strategic product plans, financial information, forecasts and growth data.

VanderZanden’s Lyft exit came after reported tensions with company founders John Zimmer and Logan Green. VanderZanden joined Lyft when it acquired his on demand car wash startup Cherry. A few months after he left Lyft, Uber hired him to help with the company’s international growth.

The allegations labelled at him by Lyft were committed before he left the company. Lyft alleges that VanderZanden breached the confidentiality agreement he signed when he joined the company. Lyft has provided a timeline of events for the allegations the company is labeling against VanderZanden. After he had made known his intention to quit on 12 August, VanderZanden agreed to meet with Zimmer and Green on 15 August to discuss the matter further. But VanderZanden cancelled that meeting and suggested they speak after the weekend.

It is that weekend that Lyft alleges that VanderZanden backed up a number of emails and confidential documents to his personal home computer and mobile device before handing his company computer back. All of this information was discovered after Lyft conducted a forensic analysis of his company issued laptop.

Lyft says that during VanderZanden employment, he had access to the company’s Dropbox account and thus he had no reason to be back up documents to his personal account.

The company says:

VanderZanden’s possession of Lyft confidential information post-employment breached his Confidentiality Agreement. That agreement bars him from possessing, post-employment, any Lyft confidential and proprietary information, and prohibits him from using or disclosing such information to anyone.

Lyft makes further claims that VanderZanden’s signing of the confidentially agreement required him to certify via termination certification that he would continue to honour that agreement. According to Lyft, he refused to sign that agreement and to return confidential information post employment.

Other allegations that are labelled against VanderZanden are that he tried to influence Lyft employees to leave the company and join Uber. These employees include Lyft VP of operations Stephen Schnell and fellow employee Ryan Fujiu.

Lyft reached out to Uber urging the company to conduct its own investigation into VanderZanden’s conduct. However, Uber counsel claimed on October 13 that he “[had] no Lyft proprietary information in his possession – not now, not when he started at Uber, and not since he left Lyft.”

With the filing, Lyft is seeking to have the confidential documents returned, destroyed from VanderZanden’s personal computer or any other devices that might be able to access it and kept from soliciting other employees to leave the company, among other things.

Uber or VanderZanden are yet to respond to the lawsuit.

Read the full Lyft statement below:

Lyft Sues Former COO

Image: Σπύρος Βάθης via Flickr.