Insurance broker Marsh USA is suing rival Alliant Insurance Services, this time for allegedly poaching key commercial surety employees and clients.
New York-based Marsh is accusing California-based Alliant of inducing key commercial surety employees to breach their non-solicitation and confidentiality agreements and of wrongfully interfering in Marsh’s business relationships. Marsh and Alliant are two of the biggest insurance agencies in the country.
Marsh alleges Alliant wanted a commercial surety practice and targeted Glenn Pelletiere, Marsh’s commercial surety leader for the Northeast. Pelletiere had spent nearly a decade at Marsh, building a commercial surety book of business, anchored by four marquee clients.
On January 24, 2025, when Pelletiere resigned to join Alliant, Marsh said he promised he would refrain from taking any clients or employees. However, according to the complaint, three key surety team employees—Colin Horgan. Madison Diaz and Nicholas Manning—resigned minutes later. Marsh says “each one played a critical role” in keeping Marsh’s surety clients close and each was bound by one-year post-employment restrictions prohibiting the solicitation or servicing of Marsh clients and the solicitation of Marsh employees.
According to the complaint, after the employees resigned, the client solicitation of Marsh clients began, and in March, one of the largest commercial surety clients in Pelletiere’s book of business moved to Alliant.
Marsh calls this case “yet another chapter in Alliant’s execution of its corporate strategy of theft. Alliant does not build—it raids. And once again, it has raided a Marsh McLennan entity for a high-performing team, led by a key producer managing a substantial book of business, in deliberate violation of binding contractual restrictions and settled law.”
Marsh is suing to enforce its former employees’ restrictive covenants, protect its confidential and trade secret information, enjoin the employees and Alliant from taking more accounts, and halt what it says is “Alliant’s campaign of unfair competition.” In addition to injunctive relief against the employees and Alliant, Marsh seeks to recover its business losses, legal costs and damages including punitive damages.
“This raid is no outlier,” Marsh says in its new complaint, claiming that as many as 70 cases with similar claims have been filed against Alliant.
This is also not the first feud between the two. Marsh McLennan Agency (MMA) sued Alliant for similar claims in December 2024. In January, a judge blocked Alliant from soliciting MMA clients and the following May, MMA won a permanent injunction prohibiting Alliant from soliciting certain “restricted” Marsh clients and from using confidential information. The injunction applies to Alliant and Johnny Osborne, a former producer in MMA’s Huntsville, Alabama office, and two members of his team— all three of whom simultaneously resigned in December 2024 to join Alliant.
In that case, the judge concluded that MMA “clearly is entitled” to a prohibitory injunction against Osborne and Alliant to prevent further losses of client relationships and customer goodwill and further use or disclosure of protected confidential information.
In the Osborne proceedings, Alliant opposed a restraining order as anti-competitive, relying on a prior case involving similar allegations between Marsh and Alliant. Alliant argued that court ruling concluded that the “types of restrictive covenants Marsh is seeking to enforce are unenforceable as a matter of law.” However, the judge dismissed that argument, finding that the case Alliant relied on is an “outlier” and not representative of the body of the law on such agreements. In fact, the judge added, New York courts will enforce a restrictive covenant “to the extent necessary to protect an employer’s relationships and goodwill.”
Topics
Lawsuits
Commercial Lines
Alliant
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