Claims
Howden gets Oct. 16 deadline to produce personal device data in Brown & Brown suit
By Insurance Wire Staff, . Insurance Wire.
A Suffolk County Superior Court judge has given Howden U.S. until Oct. 16 to complete document production in Brown & Brown's lawsuit alleging the rival brokerage orchestrated a mass raid of its employees and clients, Business Insurance reported. Judge Debra Squires-Lee granted the extension following a Sept. 10 hearing, according to a handwritten note on the motion cited by Business Insurance. Howden had sought only until Sept. 25.
The expanded discovery is notable for what it now covers: personal electronic devices belonging to former Brown & Brown employees who subsequently joined Howden. According to Business Insurance, Howden told the court that about 125 of the 270 former Brown & Brown employees who came over said they may have used personal devices to communicate with clients. Expanded discovery has generated roughly 4,300 new search terms, Howden said.
Brown & Brown opposed the extension, filing a motion on Sept. 2 arguing that Howden had already missed court-ordered discovery deadlines. Business Insurance reported that Brown & Brown noted Howden produced 14,588 documents on Aug. 21 alone, more than the 13,433 documents it had produced across the preceding seven months combined, a figure that cuts both ways: it shows a late surge in production but also raises questions about why the pace was so slow earlier.
The financial stakes are not abstract. Brown & Brown disclosed on its second-quarter earnings call, as reported by Business Insurance, that it expects the full-year 2026 revenue impact from new and lost business and incentives tied to the departures to total $50 million to $60 million.
The broader context is that Howden has hired hundreds of employees from competitors since launching its U.S. retail brokerage operation last year, according to Business Insurance. The lawsuit is one of the more consequential tests of how aggressively a new market entrant can recruit from an established rival before crossing into legally actionable territory.
The personal device question is likely to be the harder discovery problem going forward. Courts have increasingly had to grapple with the evidentiary status of communications on employee-owned phones and laptops, and the 125-employee figure suggests the volume of potentially relevant material is substantial. Whether Howden can collect, review and produce that material by Oct. 16 will determine whether the discovery dispute continues to dog the litigation or whether the case moves toward a merits phase. Brokers watching this case should note that the $50 million to $60 million revenue exposure Brown & Brown has put on record gives the litigation a concrete financial floor that will shape any eventual settlement calculus.
Source: https://www.businessinsurance.com/howden-given-extension-in-brown-brown-lawsuit/
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