TCW Going After Gundlach's DoubleLine Funds Trust Now

We first reported on the claims of trade secret misappropriation against California-based money manager and financier Jeffrey Gundlach and his new company here: http://wombletradesecrets.blogspot.com/2010/01/money-management-firm-says-former.html.

Bloomberg News is reporting that TCW is alleging in a newly filed suit that DoubleLine Funds Trust was started to market DoubleLine Capital’s mutual funds and to “generate fees and profit for Gundlach and the money management firm he had formed,” according to a new complaint filed yesterday in state court in Los Angeles. TCW provided a copy of the complaint to Bloomberg News.

TCW, a Los Angeles-based money management firm, accuses the trust and its trustees of misappropriation of trade secrets and unfair competition, among other allegations, and seeks unspecified damages.

“Jeffrey Gundlach and his co-conspirators built a business based on the wholesale theft of huge amounts of TCW’s proprietary data and analytical systems, and that business includes DoubleLine Funds Trust,” Steve Madison, a lawyer for TCW, said yesterday in an e-mailed statement. “When DoubleLine Funds was launched last spring, TCW notified the funds and their trustees of TCW’s intent to name the trust as a defendant.”

TCW, a unit of Societe Generale, in January accused Gundlach and several former employees who joined DoubleLine of breach of fiduciary duty, unfair competition and misappropriation of confidential information and demanded more than $200 million in damages.