In a legal battle seldom seen in civil court, Bernardo Mendoza is suing two other bakers for the sake of sweet bread.Not just any sweet bread, but sugary Mexican concoctions such as "seashells," "rocks," and "kisses" the baker says took him nearly two-thirds of his life to perfect, only to be stolen overnight by the competition.
Mendoza's Tienda y Panaderia Santa Cruz in North Portland's St. Johns neighborhood is suing former employees Benjamin Gomez Mendoza and Luis Morales alleging "misappropriation of trade secrets" -- stealing recipes protected by contract and in great demand by Latinos across Portland.
"After a few workers resigned, a lawyer drafted a trade-secrets agreement for Santa Cruz. In it, employees agree they won't share recipes or techniques for a two-year period after termination, won't work at a bakery within a 30-mile radius of the St. Johns store or return to solicit Mendoza's workers to work elsewhere."The Mendoza brothers say they began to see Bernardo's bread appear at El Grande and their own sweet bread sales dipped. So they hired Chernoff, Vilhauer, McClung & Stenzel, a Portland intellectual-law firm known for representing such high-stakes corporations as Nike.
The lawsuit, filed Feb. 11 in Multnomah County Circuit Court, seeks $10,000 in damages, attorney fees and demands that the defendants stop using Santa Cruz's recipes.
Standing on a floor colored white with flour, the defendants insist they did not steal recipes and, because of their limited English, they had no idea what they agreed to by signing the trade secrets contract.
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