In the latest salvo in the ongoing legal dispute between Ameriprise and LPL Financial over advisors' alleged breaches of contractual agreements, LPL states in a new response that Ameriprise is "chasing headlines" and has filed seven other actions over the past year "without making any attempt to address them with LPL before suing."
On Feb. 11, Ameriprise filed its latest action in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona calling for a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction against three advisors — Jared Roskelley, Kyle Robertson and Matthew Tinyo — who resigned from Ameriprise on Jan. 27 and immediately commenced employment with LPL Financial Services.
LPL fired back on Feb. 15 that while Ameriprise, like many other broker-dealers, has entered into the industry agreement known as the Protocol for Broker Recruiting "with the express purpose of avoiding litigation, it gives that agreement only lip service."
LPL states: "In a deeply misguided and unfortunate attempt to stop the steady outflow of advisors, Ameriprise has taken to filing serial litigation against advisors that depart it for LPL. Ameriprise does so based on alleged conduct that took place while the advisor was under its supervision, about which LPL could not possibly — and does not — have knowledge."
In its Feb. 11 filing, Ameriprise alleged that "Roskelley, Tinyo, and Robertson violated — and continue to violate — the Protocol for Broker Recruiting, their contractual agreements with Ameriprise, and common and statutory law through their impermissible taking of confidential information related to clients, pre-solicitation, and solicitation of, the clients they previously serviced at Ameriprise."
Ameriprise went on to state that it recently discovered that before resigning from Ameriprise, "Roskelley, Tinyo, and Robertson preemptively violated the Protocol, their duties of loyalty to Ameriprise and their agreements, by taking confidential documents and information, sending unapproved packages of documents to clients via USPS, UPS, and electronic upload, and pre-solicited clients ahead of their resignation," according to the complaint.
LPL states, however, that Ameriprise's claims, "like in the other cases it has filed, are meritless," and that the firm "has rushed to burden this Court and the parties with a TRO based on breathless accusations. But they are empty. The advisors retained publicly-available customer information pursuant to the Protocol from Ameriprise."
The advisors, the LPL reply contends, "did not send it to anyone else at LPL, and LPL is not otherwise in possession of any information originating from Ameriprise. None. And Ameriprise is plainly not at risk of irreparable harm based on the routine act of advisors calling their own customers (a list of whom were left with Ameriprise) and asking if these customers will join them at their new firm — an event that occurs with every transfer under the Protocol."
Ameriprise’s motion for a TRO should be denied, LPL states, and "the parties should be directed to FINRA arbitration to resolve the merits of their dispute."
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