Court dismisses $5-million lawsuit against IT firm

A lawsuit filed against a Grand Rapids-based tech company was dismissed.

Note Tech Industries LLC, doing business as Tech Defenders, and Repair Center LLC, an educational mobile device repair company, reached an agreement to dismiss a lawsuit that was filed by Wisconsin-based Diamond Assets.

The dismissal comes shortly after Garry VonMyhr, the CEO of Note Tech Industries, said his company filed a countersuit in February protesting the accusation.

Now that the dismissal has been agreed upon, VonMyhr said the companies can compete in the marketplace freely.

Note Tech Industries, which is located at 2350 Oak Industrial Drive NE in Grand Rapids, partners with school districts to purchase old technological devices from the schools, which in turn use those funds to purchase new devices. In addition to repairing those outdated items, Note Tech also offers schools device insurance and protection plans.

“I think it is important that people know that we can continue to compete in the marketplace, we can do buybacks and we are going to continue to provide great services to school districts,” VonMyhr said.

According to court documents from the U.S. District Court Western District of Wisconsin, “Plaintiff Diamond Assets LLC and Defendants Note Tech Industries, LLC and Repair Center, LLC (collectively “the Parties”), by their respective attorneys, hereby stipulate that this action may be dismissed in its entirety, with prejudice, pursuant to settlement.”

Diamond Assets was suing for at least $5 million in damages alleging a breach of their consumers’ confidential information in 2017, which the Grand Rapids Business Journal reported last year.

Steven Shapiro, the attorney representing Diamond Assets, which is an IT asset disposition company and Apple trade-in partner for the education sector that also refurbishes and trades up devices, said last year that it entered into a nondisclosure agreement in 2015 to form a “strategic alliance.”

However, according to the lawsuit that was filed, Diamond Assets accused Tech Defenders of “duplicat(ing) Diamond’s proprietary methods and processes while undercutting Diamond’s bids for customer contracts and inappropriately diverting business away from (the) plaintiff.”

Despite the accusation, Shapiro now said both parties are happy with the agreement that was reached in the dismissal of the case.

“Based on the pleadings that were filed, Diamond Assets had some grievances with Tech Defenders and those were communicated very effectively,” Shapiro said. “Now, both parties are able to move on from what they’ve learned about each other in the course of this brief dispute.”

VonMyhr said with more companies like Tech Defenders and Diamond Assets in the marketplace, it helps both compete and give school districts more money for their old IT devices.

VonMyhr also is the co-founder of Genius Phone Repair and Mobile Defenders.