A niche insurer alleges a former employee helped herself to its client database five days after being fired - then used it to poach business for a rival.
A.W.G. Dewar, Inc. and its affiliate Intact Insurance Group USA LLC filed a complaint on September 17, 2026, in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts against a former account executive. The filing alleges the ex-employee accessed a password-protected customer database after her termination and exported contact details for the company's current and prospective clients.
A market small enough to fit on a spreadsheet
Tuition refund insurance is about as niche as the property and casualty sector gets. The product covers schools when students withdraw, are dismissed, or have their enrollment interrupted by other covered events - protecting the institution against lost tuition revenue. According to the complaint, roughly 30,000 private schools operate in the US, but only about 1,200 of them carry tuition refund coverage. Dewar says it insures approximately 1,100 of those schools, with an average customer relationship of around 33 years.
That concentration makes the client list unusually valuable. A competitor without it would need to cold-call all 30,000 schools just to find the 4% likely to be interested, the complaint says - and then work out who at each school actually makes the purchasing decision.
What the complaint says happened
The filing alleges the former employee was hired as an account executive in July 2022, managing relationships with about 119 of Dewar's school accounts. She had access to customer identities, renewal schedules, pricing, decision-maker contacts, and business strategies.
She also had access to Dewar's Constant Contact database - a password-protected system holding contact and marketing information for the company's entire customer and prospect base. According to the complaint, only three people at Dewar normally have access to Constant Contact, all of them more senior than the former employee. She was given access when her supervisor went on leave to manage marketing campaigns.
After what the complaint describes as years of feedback about poor performance, Dewar terminated her employment on April 17, 2026. The company deactivated her internal login credentials and computer access. But Dewar's Constant Contact credentials were not caught in that sweep.
Five days later, on April 22, the filing alleges she logged back into the Constant Contact account using her Dewar credentials. The complaint's introduction says she "discovered" that her login still worked. During that session, the filing says she "copied, exported, and/or otherwise misappropriated" the identities of Dewar's current and prospective customer institutions, along with individual contact names, titles, and email addresses. When asked about the access, the filing states she "could not provide any logical excuse or explanation."
The move to a competitor
Shortly after leaving Dewar, the former employee began working for Vertical Insure, Inc. as its School Partnerships & Growth Lead, according to the complaint. Vertical is described as a relatively recent entrant to the tuition refund market, founded around 2022. The filing alleges she has already solicited multiple Dewar customers since joining Vertical - contacts she allegedly had "no way of knowing" without Dewar's proprietary data.
The complaint values the stolen trade secrets at well over $1 million and alleges the former employee's conduct has caused what the filing calls "considerable harm," including disclosure of confidential information, diversion of business opportunities, and disruption of longstanding client relationships.
What Dewar is asking the court to do
Dewar and Intact bring five claims. Three target the alleged data theft itself - two under federal and state trade secret laws (the Defend Trade Secrets Act and its Massachusetts equivalent) and one under common law. A fourth alleges the former employee broke federal computer fraud laws by accessing Dewar's system without authorisation after her employment ended. The fifth says she deliberately interfered with Dewar's existing and prospective business relationships.
Beyond damages, the plaintiffs want a court order barring the former employee from contacting any school in Dewar's database or sharing that information with Vertical. They are also seeking an order to preserve electronic evidence and return any devices containing Dewar's data.
For carriers and underwriters in specialty lines, the case is a reminder that in a market small enough to know every customer by name, a single database export can represent the entire competitive landscape.
All allegations in the complaint are untested, and no court has made any findings on the merits.
