Plaza Marine alleges Ankora used company secrets

New Jersey-based marine fuel supplier Plaza Marine is suing another supplier, Ankora Fuels, alleging that two former Plaza Marine employees used company trade secrets to benefit a rival company and to compete in the same market.

Plaza Marine alleges that the two ex-employees, John and Zachary Barbarise, used its trade secrets, confidential information, customer, and supplier relationships to conduct business that is virtually identical to Plaza Marine, according to the suit filed last month in US District Court for the District of New Jersey.

John Barbarise was vice president of sales and trading at Plaza Marine until May 2023 and Zachary Barbarise was an operations manager until July 2024. Both individuals are listed as defendants in the suit in addition to Ankora Fuels.

According to the lawsuit, John and Zachary's positions at Plaza Marine gave them access to proprietary information about Plaza Marine's business including contracts with its customers, supplier lists and long-term planning like price strategies for its customers.

Plaza Marine alleges that John and Zachary used this information to attempt to "clone" Plaza Marine including chartering a vessel that is a long-term vendor of the company and creating a pricing methodology that is like Plaza Marine. This has created confusion in the marine fuel market, according to Plaza Marine.

"By creating a competing company engaged in virtually the same activities as Plaza Marine, it is inevitable that John and Zachary will necessarily use and disclose Plaza Marine's trade secrets for their own personal gain and to create an unfair competitive advantage for Ankora," the company said in the suit.

According to the lawsuit, prior to resigning from Plaza Marine, Zachary allegedly contacted John on multiple occasions and accessed files related to Plaza Marine's customers, including once after an internal meeting that discussed confidential information related to its customers and suppliers.

Zachary also allegedly created Google document files on a personal device and copied and pasted Plaza Marine's trade secrets into that file prior to departing from the company. Plaza Marine alleges that Zachary was passing along this confidential information to John for use at Ankora.

Ankora said the allegations are "completely baseless" and that John and Zachary have never taken any information from Plaza Marine. The company said that Zachary has never worked for Ankora and the Google sheets Plaza Marine allegedly found in Zachary's computer were files "for a fantasy football draft and an ultimate fighting championship contest."

"The simple truth is Plaza Marine does not want to face competition from a new player in its space. Plaza Marine wants to continue to mistreat customers and other business partners by blocking Ankora Fuels' entry into the market. That's why Plaza Marine has filed this baseless lawsuit. Plain and simple. We are confident that our customers will see the same, and that they will realize – if they haven't already – that Plaza Marine is not a good partner for their businesses," Ankora said.

By Luis Gronda