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A Fishers-based cargo and freight company is suing two of its former employees, accusing them of stealing confidential information and one of the company’s customers in order to establish their own competing firm.
CapLink Logistics Inc. filed the lawsuit on July 25 in Hamilton Commercial Court against former employees Jeremy Sullivan and Thomas Underwood, as well as Sullivan’s significant other, Mallory Spratt.
The company says it has suffered losses of at least $2.6 million as a result of the defendants’ actions. CapLink is accusing defendants of fraud, breach of contract, unfair competition, and conspiracy.
The lawsuit states that Underwood, Sullivan, and Spratt were all “onboarded” by a competing company, North Carolina-based Armstrong Transport Group LLC, that benefitted from the defendants’ use of CapLink’s confidential information.
Armstrong Transport Group did not immediately respond to The Indiana Lawyer’s request for comment.
Previously, Sullivan served as CapLink’s senior account manager, while Underwood served as an account manager. In their roles, both men pursued and identified new business opportunities, negotiated prices with customers, maintained business books, and developed leads and prospects for the company.
The men both received compensation in the form of a fixed salary as well as a percentage of the profits CapLink earned from the accounts they individually managed.
One of the company’s customers, Cover-Pools, was pursued and maintained by Sullivan and Underwood.
Between January 2024 and 2025, CapLink says it handled nearly 900 loads of freight for Cover-Pools with a generated revenue of over $2.7 million.
The lawsuit says the number of loads CapLink handled for Cover-Pools stayed consistently high until February 2025, when the shipment dropped from 50 loads to six loads. Underwood also notified CapLink of his resignation the same month, saying he was pursuing an opportunity outside of the freight industry, the complaint alleges.
When CapLink asked Sullivan why the Cover-Pools shipments dropped, he said the company had informed him that there would be no more freight for February, but normal shipments would resume in March, the lawsuit says.
But in early March, Sullivan said he received information from Cover-Pools that the company would no longer be using CapLink for its services.
A few days later, Sullivan announced his resignation, asserting he was pursuing a position unrelated to the freight business. As a result of his resignation, CapLink agreed to pay him an unearned severance of $6,250.
The lawsuit states that after both men resigned, CapLink believes it learned the truth about the loss of Cover-Pools’ business.
According to the complaint, the company discovered that in January 2025, Sullivan emailed himself using his CapLink address expressing his frustration over the company’s pay structure. Within that email, which had not been sent, Sullivan allegedly created a false argument about how the restrictive covenants in his employee contract with CapLink would not apply to Cover-Pools.
That same month, Sullivan allegedly emailed CapLink’s entire customer list to his personal email account, including information for all the customers and all sales representatives.
CapLink says it believes that the Cover-Pools loads that disappeared from CapLink’s ledger “no doubt” appeared on Armstrong’s ledger. A February 2025 email from Cover-Pools to Underwood’s CapLink email stated, “We had a shipment leave from Cover Pools on Monday. They said it’s shipping via ARMs, but that CapLink is working with them?”
CapLink says both Sullivan’s and Underwood’s employment agreements specifically stated that employees could not solicit any of CapLink’s customers to a competitor during their employment or for 18 months after.
In April 2025, an attorney for CapLink sent cease and desist letters to Sullivan and Underwood reminding them of their obligations under their employment agreements. Both men still work for Armstrong, according to the lawsuit.
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