Read from deadline and kotaku:
Netflix poached a top Activision exec, chief financial officer Spencer Neumann, before his contract expired. In response, Activision filed suit in the Superior Court of California earlier today.
According to Activision’s lawyers, Neumann started working at the Call of Duty factory in May 2017, with his contract set to lapse in April of this year. (The game publisher retained the right to extend that by one further year, too.) Netflix wooed him in late 2018. A job lasting merely a year-and-a-half job might be a corporate faux pas—and might be an eyebrow-raiser on a LinkedIn page—but it’s the contract violation that serves as the bedrock of today’s complaint.
Activision is asking for a permanent injunction—basically, a court order that says, “You can’t do this anymore”—against Netflix, barring the streaming service from hiring Activision employees who may have “fixed-term employment agreements.” Activision is also asking for punitive damages, or “punies,” which is lawyer-speak for “$$$$.”
“Netflix unapologetically recruits talent without regard to its ethical and legal obligations,” declares the complaint filed by the home of Call of Duty against Netflix for wooing Activision chief financial officer Spencer Neumann in late 2018 to eventually become the streamer’s top finance guy.
“To shape its workforce to its desires, Netflix not only ruthlessly fires its own employees that it deems ‘adequate,’ but is engaged in a years-long campaign of unlawfully poaching executives from Netflix’s competitors regardless of their contractual obligations,” adds the lean three-claim suit filed this morning in Los Angeles Superior Court
Perhaps to make matters more damning in this case, at least in the plaintiff’s POV, Netflix pulled former Disney exec Neumann over to their side as Activision was “negotiating with Netflix over a commercial partnership to distribute Activision’s linear media content,” according to the 13-page document.
“Netflix intentionally and substantially induced, assisted, and encouraged Neumann to breach his fiduciary duties by recruiting him and offering him employment with Netflix and agreeing to indemnify Neumann for any claims against him arising from his breach of the Neumann Agreement and/or his fiduciary duties,” lawyers Daniel Petrocelli, Molly Lens and Eric Amdursky says in the complaint.
Pink-slipped for cause (aka his dalliance with the streamer) in late 2018 after just over a year and a half as Activision’s CFO and with more than two years left on his contract, Neumann was named Netflix’s CFO in January 2019. Obviously, there have been a number of corner-office exits at Netflix in the past few months, but Neumann is still there overseeing the numbers. Even more so, the debt-laden company is plugging in further to the lucrative video game market with the likes of Stranger Things 3: The Game.
Netflix poached a top Activision exec, chief financial officer Spencer Neumann, before his contract expired. In response, Activision filed suit in the Superior Court of California earlier today.
According to Activision’s lawyers, Neumann started working at the Call of Duty factory in May 2017, with his contract set to lapse in April of this year. (The game publisher retained the right to extend that by one further year, too.) Netflix wooed him in late 2018. A job lasting merely a year-and-a-half job might be a corporate faux pas—and might be an eyebrow-raiser on a LinkedIn page—but it’s the contract violation that serves as the bedrock of today’s complaint.
Activision is asking for a permanent injunction—basically, a court order that says, “You can’t do this anymore”—against Netflix, barring the streaming service from hiring Activision employees who may have “fixed-term employment agreements.” Activision is also asking for punitive damages, or “punies,” which is lawyer-speak for “$$$$.”
“Netflix unapologetically recruits talent without regard to its ethical and legal obligations,” declares the complaint filed by the home of Call of Duty against Netflix for wooing Activision chief financial officer Spencer Neumann in late 2018 to eventually become the streamer’s top finance guy.
“To shape its workforce to its desires, Netflix not only ruthlessly fires its own employees that it deems ‘adequate,’ but is engaged in a years-long campaign of unlawfully poaching executives from Netflix’s competitors regardless of their contractual obligations,” adds the lean three-claim suit filed this morning in Los Angeles Superior Court
Perhaps to make matters more damning in this case, at least in the plaintiff’s POV, Netflix pulled former Disney exec Neumann over to their side as Activision was “negotiating with Netflix over a commercial partnership to distribute Activision’s linear media content,” according to the 13-page document.
“Netflix intentionally and substantially induced, assisted, and encouraged Neumann to breach his fiduciary duties by recruiting him and offering him employment with Netflix and agreeing to indemnify Neumann for any claims against him arising from his breach of the Neumann Agreement and/or his fiduciary duties,” lawyers Daniel Petrocelli, Molly Lens and Eric Amdursky says in the complaint.
Pink-slipped for cause (aka his dalliance with the streamer) in late 2018 after just over a year and a half as Activision’s CFO and with more than two years left on his contract, Neumann was named Netflix’s CFO in January 2019. Obviously, there have been a number of corner-office exits at Netflix in the past few months, but Neumann is still there overseeing the numbers. Even more so, the debt-laden company is plugging in further to the lucrative video game market with the likes of Stranger Things 3: The Game.
