Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, TORT CLAIMS—6th Cir.: District court applied too stringent preliminary injunction test in trade secrets case, (May 20, 2026)

By Ronald Miller, J.D.

While a court should “consider” all four factors, it is a sliding-scale inquiry that turns “as much on the equities of a given case as the substance of the legal issues it presents.”

A district court erred in requiring PCC Airfoils to establish by “clear and convincing evidence” each of the four factors considered in order to be eligible for a preliminary relief, ruled the Sixth Circuit. After an employee accepted employment with a competitor, PCC alleged that he printed several documents containing trade secrets on his way out the door. PCC sued and sought a preliminary injunction to prevent the employee from disclosing the trade secrets or working on products involving industrial gas turbine airfoils. Rather than requiring clear and convincing evidence for each preliminary injunction factor, a court should consider all four factors to determine whether, taken together, they clearly weigh in favor of granting injunctive relief. Accordingly, the judgment of the district court was reversed (PCC Airfoils, LLC v. Daugherty, No. 25-3794 (6th Cir. May 19, 2026)).

In 1998, the employee began working for PCC, where he developed the company’s industrial gas turbine airfoils. In 2020 PCC promoted him to the position of director of engineering. Within a year, however, the company went through a restructuring and stripped the employee of his new title and responsibilities.

Thereafter, the employee received an offer to become the director of engineering at Consolidated Precision Products, one of PCC’s competitors. The employee took it. He did not have a non-compete agreement with PCC.

Trade secrets. After the employee submitted his resignation, PCC investigated his printing activity to determine whether he took any trade secrets with him. PCC’s analysis identified four documents that he had potentially queued for printing in the last two days of his employment at the company, each of which contained confidential information about PCC’s airfoils. Forensic analysts could not verify that the employee printed the four documents. When PCC did not find the documents in the materials that the employee left behind, it concluded that he printed and stole PCC trade secrets.

PCC sued the employee and Consolidated alleging that the employee breached a contractual duty of confidentiality and that he and his new employer intended to misappropriate PCC’s trade secrets. PCC filed a motion to preliminarily enjoin the employee from sharing any trade secrets with the competitor and from working on projects involving industrial gas turbine airfoils.

The district court denied PCC’s motion on the ground that it failed to “establish its case” for each of the four preliminary injunction factors by “clear and convincing evidence.” PCC appealed.

Preliminary injunction. When faced with requests for a preliminary injunction, district courts consider four factors: (1) the plaintiff’s likelihood of success on the merits; (2) the risk of irreparable harm to the plaintiff in the absence of an injunction; (3) the risk that an injunction will harm others; and (4) the broader public interest.

Measured by these requirements, the district court erred in requiring PCC to establish “clear and convincing evidence” with respect to each of the four factors in order to be eligible for preliminary relief. While a court should “consider” all four factors, it is a sliding-scale inquiry that turns “as much on the equities of a given case as the substance of the legal issues it presents.” A court may not require every plaintiff to meet a heightened standard of proof for every preliminary injunction factor to qualify for injunctive relief.

Clear showing. The employee pointed to Supreme Court case law, Winter v. Nat. Res. Def. Council, Inc., 555 U.S. 7, 20 (2008), that says a district court may issue a preliminary injunction only if a plaintiff makes “a clear showing that [it] is entitled to such relief.” But he overread the phrase “clear showing” and misplaced its import. Requiring a “clear showing” to obtain a preliminary injunction is not the same thing as requiring “clear and convincing evidence” to establish each of the four factors to establish eligibility for this relief.

Instead of creating a heightened standard of evidentiary proof for each factor individually, the “clear showing” phrase clarifies that, on balance, the four preliminary injunction factors must clearly weigh in the plaintiff’s favor to qualify for injunctive relief.

“Clear and convincing evidence” standard. The “clear and convincing evidence” standard may apply in a civil case if “a statute or the Constitution requires a heightened standard [of proof] or in certain other rare cases, such as when the government seeks to take unusual coercive action—action more dramatic than entering an award of money damages or other conventional relief—against an individual.”

No statute or rule required clear and convincing evidence for any facet of this dispute. Nor did the two statutes under which PCC brought its action. The clear and convincing evidence standard thus had no role to play in this case.

The appeals court rejected the employee’s contention that failing to apply the clear and convincing evidence standard will allow plaintiffs to “effectively receive two opportunities to litigate the same factual disputes,” one during a preliminary injunction hearing and the other at trial. However, the appeals court observed that a “court’s resolution of issues in a preliminary-injunction order is never binding on a case’s underlying merits.”

Accordingly, the appeals court reversed the judgment of the district court.

The case is No. 25-3794.

Judge: Sutton, J.

Attorneys: Michael P. Elkon (Fisher & Phillips) for PCC Airfoils, LLC. Phil Eckenrode (Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Aronoff) for Justin Daugherty and Consolidated Precision Products Corp.

Companies: PCC Airfoils, LLC; Consolidated Precision Products Corp.

MainStory: TopStory TortClaims RemediesDamages Procedure ContractClaims KentuckyNews MichiganNews OhioNews TennesseeNews GCNNews