Ex-Hershey snack chief accuses company of character assassination
The former president of The H ershey Company’s healthy snack brand Amplify has accused the chocolate company of being “vindictive” by claiming that he had stolen trade secrets before his departure.
Last week, WIPR reported that Hershey sued Doug Behrens, claiming that he had “orchestrated a secret plan to steal some of Hershey’s most sensitive trade secret and confidential business information and hide his tracks after doing so,” before jumping ship to rival, healthy snack brand Kind.
But on Friday, January 31, Behrens shot back, claiming that Hershey was “motivated to smear his reputation” with the false allegations because he had the “temerity to resign from Hershey after more than a year of Hershey’s broken promises to him”.
A different story
Behrens, who joined Hershey as the chief customer officer of Amplify in May 2018, said he had accepted the position in reliance on Hershey’s promises that he would have the autonomy to run the business and choose his team and that the company would relocate the Amplify headquarters from Texas to Colorado, his state of residence.
“Hershey reneged on all those promises, with the result that Behrens virtually lived on aeroplanes and at airports throughout his tenure at Hershey. After over a year of backbreaking travel and Hershey’s interference with Behrens’ management of Amplify brands, Behrens decided to resign,” said his answer.
The chocolate company had accused the former president of failing to pay back a $250,000 signing bonus and shares in the company that he reportedly owes after breaching his contract.
However, according to Behrens, he gave notice of his intent to resign to the then head of global human resources at Hershey, Chris Scalia, and informed him that he had accepted a role with Kind.
The human resources executive allegedly asked Behrens to keep his plans to work for Kind confidential to give Scalia the opportunity to discuss the situation with other Hershey executives.
“Scalia expressly promised that if Behrens would agree to stay on for a transition period, Hershey would not seek to claw back the $250,000 sign-on bonus Behrens received when he started at Hershey—precisely the sign-on bonus that is now the subject of Hershey’s first cause of action against Behrens,” said the suit.
Hershey told a different story in its claim—alleging that Behrens had hidden the fact that he was moving to Kind.
Personally responsible
According to Hershey, Behrens sent more than 100 Hershey documents from his work email account to his personal account, before wiping all the data from the Hershey laptop.
However, while Behrens said he did email a collection of Hershey documents to his personal account it was so he would be able to reference them if his successor called with questions or seeking assistance.
Behrens said his successor had almost no knowledge of the relevant market or customers and there were some “very significant” business decisions to be made shortly after his last day.
His successor and other Amplify colleagues reportedly reached out to Behrens with questions and requests for assistance after his departure, said Behrens, although he never used, disclosed, or even accessed any of the documents he had sent to his personal email.
On the alleged wiping of the laptop, Behrens said he wanted to remove sensitive personal information and had confirmed with Hershey’s IT department that re-installing Windows wouldn’t cause any data to be lost.
“The most glaring omission from Hershey’s complaint is any mention of the immediate, thorough, and responsible steps Behrens and Kind took when Hershey raised a concern about the documents he had forwarded to his personal email account,” said his answer.
Within 24 hours after receiving a letter from Hershey’s lawyers, Behrens voluntarily delivered his personal laptop, his Kind-issued laptop and his personal iPhone for inspection. Over the next few months, he worked with Hershey’s lawyers to “facilitate an exhaustive and highly intrusive examination of his personal electronic devices and filings”.
“The result of that comprehensive, transparent, and invasive process was complete vindication of Behrens,” said Behrens in his response, adding that on the same day he signed a declaration that he didn’t use or disclose any Hershey confidential information, Hershey filed suit.
“In making such misrepresentations, Hershey presumably hides behind the defamation and libel privilege of court filings in an effort to assassinate Behrens’ character and destroy his reputation,” added the response.
According to Behrens, the vindictive motive is clear and it’s not because Hershey genuinely believes Behrens had used or disclosed Hershey confidential information.
The answer added: “Rather, as Hershey and its Amplify division face problems with lagging business performance, employee defections and low morale (which discovery will reveal), instead of acknowledging that Hershey lost yet another highly regarded team leader, it sought to divert attention from its talent exodus by discrediting him with this lawsuit.”
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