Plaintiff Barrett Business Services, Inc. (“BBSI”) is a human resources management company that contracts with small and medium-sized businesses to provide human resource management solutions, including temporary staffing and professional services. It provided these services to employers throughout the Yakima area and particularly to fruit growers and other agricultural companies.
On April 23, 2014, BBSI hired Defendant Charles Colmenero (“Colmenero”) as an area manager to start on May 12, 2014. Colmenero quit BBSI on July 12, 2022. On July 17, 2015, BBSI hired Defendant Santiago Alejo (“Alejo”) as a Recruitment Specialist to start on July 27, 2015. Alejo quit BBSI on July 8, 2022. Colmenero and Alejo set up their own business, Repsel Associates, Inc., d/b/a/ Personna Employment Solutions (Personna).
Plaintiff brought this suit against Defendants alleging various claims including violation of the Washington Uniform Trade Secrets Act (“UTSA”) and the Federal Defend Trade Secrets Act (“DTSA”) through misappropriation of trade secrets. Defendants also asserted several counterclaims against Plaintiff.
Plaintiff has submitted an expert report and declaration by William E. Partin (“Partin”) pertaining to Plaintiff’s alleged damages. Defendants have filed a Daubert motion to exclude Partin’s testimony.
Accounting Expert Witness
William E. Partin is the President of the accounting firm of Mueller & Partin Forensic Accountants and Forensic Economists where his practice is the economic analysis of damage claims in disputes involving personal injury, wrongful death, business income losses and business valuations. He is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, the National Association of Forensic Economists, the Washington Society of Certified Public Accountants and the American Society of Appraisers.
Partin has been qualified as an expert witness in the fields of economics, business valuation and accounting. He has testified in numerous states regarding damage measurement issues. Partin has provided seminars to the insurance industry on measurement of economic damages as well as published articles concerning the framework for the measurement of business income losses. He received his Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration. from Washington State University and has been practicing since 1976.
Discussion by the Court
Defendants did not challenge Partin’s qualifications as an accountant but rather contended Partin’s testimony is unreliable because it is based on false assumptions and conclusory methods.
To begin with, Partin summarized all of Personna’s invoices issued to its clients from July 2022 through August 2023. He then identified nine of those clients invoiced as having been clients of BBSI within one year prior to Defendants’ end of employment with BBSI and that were directly managed by Colmenero and Alejo while they were employed by BBSI.
Partin also compared BBSI’s contribution margins realized for its Yakima, Moses Lake, and Hermiston branches from January 1, 2021 through July 31, 2022, prior to Defendants leaving BBSI, to those contribution margins realized for the same branches August 1, 2022 through September 30, 2023, after Defendants left BBSI. Partin found that BBSI incurred a decline in gross revenue and contribution margins for the year after Defendants left BBSI and attributed the total lost contribution margin to Defendants’ misappropriation which totaled $1,254,960.
Finally, Partin calculated the total estimated lost contribution to BBSI’s profit and overhead for the next ten years, based on anticipated BBSI testimony that the average customer retention is approximately ten years, by combining the $801,840 allegedly already realized the first year with the $1,254,960 that BBSI would have realized each year for the next nine years but for Defendants’ misappropriation.
Analysis
To the extent Partin’s testimony contains legal conclusions, those must be excluded. However, the Court found that Partin’s methodology behind his first calculation of BBSI’s estimated damages from the actual revenue realized by Personna over the fourteen-month period from nine previous clients of BBSI that were directly managed by Defendants to be sufficiently reliable to avoid exclusion.
Partin’s testimony as to calculated future loss profits based on the decline in revenue across BBSI’s geographically adjacent branches in the year after Defendants’ departure from BBSI is however too speculative. Partin was told by BBSI to assume that the decline in revenue across all branches was a result of Defendants’ misappropriation of trade secrets. Now that the Court has dismissed Plaintiff’s trade secret claim as to its temporary-employee list, BBSI’s list of its clients’ pricing and needs is the only remaining possible trade secret misappropriation claim that is at issue in this case. As such, Partin’s damages calculations stemming from BBSI’s lost revenue is overly broad.
First, Partin’s calculations of lost revenue from 2022 to 2023 include many customers that contributed no revenue to BBSI from August 2022 through September 2023 but nor were they invoiced by Personna between July 2022 and August 2023. Partin’s damages calculation based on an assumption that all of BBSI’s loss in revenue across all three branches between 2022 and 2023, a total of $1,254,960, was attributed to Defendants’ misappropriation of BBSI’s clients’ pricing and needs is not calculated with reasonable certainty.
Therefore, by extension, Partin’s assumption that that $1,254,960 loss in revenue would have been realized each year for nine years thereafter if not for Defendants’ misappropriation was also not calculated with reasonable certainty and was excluded by the Court.
Held
The Court granted in part Defendants’ motion to exclude the testimony of William Partin.
Key Takeaway
While an expert cannot testify to a matter of law amounting to a legal conclusion, the Court found that Partin’s report sufficiently raises an issue of fact as to the damages element of Plaintiff’s misappropriation claim. It should be noted that Partin’s testimony was not fully excluded by the Court.
Case Details:
| Case Caption: | Barrett Business Services Inc V. Colmenero |
| Docket Number: | 1:22cv3122 |
| Court Name: | United States District Court, Washington Eastern |
| Order Date: | February 05, 2026 |
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