Gattineri v. Williams-Sonoma Stores, Inc.

• Docket Number: 23-P-392
• Decision Date: 26 December 2023
• Parties: MARY GATTINERI v. WILLIAMS-SONOMA STORES, INC., & others.[1]
• Court: Appeals Court of Massachusetts

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MARY GATTINERI
v.
WILLIAMS-SONOMA STORES, INC., & others.^[1]

No. 23-P-392

Appeals Court of Massachusetts

December 26, 2023

Summary decisions issued by the Appeals Court pursuant to M.A.C. Rule 23.0, as appearing in 97 Mass.App.Ct. 1017 (2020) (formerly known as rule 1:28, as amended by 73 Mass.App.Ct. 1001 [2009]), are primarily directed to the parties and, therefore, may not fully address the facts of the case or the panel's decisional rationale. Moreover, such decisions are not circulated to the entire court and, therefore, represent only the views of the panel that decided the case. A summary decision pursuant to rule 23.0 or rule 1:28 issued after February 25, 2008, may be cited for its persuasive value but, because of the limitations noted above, not as binding precedent. See Chace v. Curran, 71 Mass.App.Ct. 258, 260 n.4 (2008).

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER PURSUANT TO RULE 23.0

The plaintiff, Mary Gattineri, appeals from a judgment of the Superior Court dismissing her complaint for trade secret misappropriation and related claims against the defendants, Williams-Sonoma Stores, Inc. (Williams-Sonoma); Lifetime Brands, Inc. (Lifetime); Teresa Musgrove; and Warren Tuttle.^[2] We agree with the motion judge that the applicable statutes of limitations bar her claims, and affirm.

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In 2003, the plaintiff designed what she called "The Perfect Brownie Pan," a pan with removable inserts that baked precut brownies. She was working in retail sales at Williams-Sonoma at the time and showed Musgrove, Williams-Sonoma's district manager, a prototype of the pan subject to a nondisclosure agreement,^[3] but was unsuccessful in developing the prototype with Williams-Sonoma. Thereafter, in 2009, the plaintiff saw a television infomercial by Allstar Marketing Group (Allstar) selling a product "virtually identical" to her invention and marketed under the name "The Perfect Brownie Pan." In 2010, Focus Products Group (Focus) obtained a patent for a pan matching her invention. Eleven years later, in 2021, the plaintiff filed this action against the defendants.

We review the allowance of a motion to dismiss under Mass. R. Civ. P. 12 (b) (6), 365 Mass. 754 (1974), "de novo, accepting the allegations in the complaint as true and drawing all reasonable inferences in the plaintiff's favor." Harrington v. Costello, 467 Mass. 720, 724 (2014). It is well settled that a motion to dismiss is an "appropriate vehicle for raising [the] defense" that "the action was commenced beyond the time constraints of the statute of limitations." Epstein v. Seigel,

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396 Mass. 278, 279 (1985). Under the discovery rule, the statute of limitations is tolled "until a plaintiff knows, or reasonably should have known, that it has been harmed or may have been harmed by the defendant's conduct." Taygeta Corp. v. Varian Assocs., Inc., 436 Mass. 217, 229 (2002).

In the present case, the plaintiff had actual knowledge of her injury when she saw the infomercial for "The Perfect Brownie Pan" in 2009. "The knowledge required to trigger commencement of the statute of limitations is not notice of every fact which must eventually be proved in support of the claim, but rather knowledge that an injury has occurred" (quotations and citation omitted). AA&D Masonry, LLC v. South St. Business Park, LLC, 93 Mass.App.Ct. 693, 699 (2018). The plaintiff alleged that after seeing the infomercial, she was "[c]oncerned that confidential information relating to her invention had been disclosed without her authorization, and that others were wrongfully profiting from her idea" and had a "strongly held belief that her rights had been violated." As the motion judge concluded:

"Even if she did not know the mechanism of injury -- i.e., exactly how her idea for the [']Perfect Brownie Pan['] got from Musgrove to Allstar -- she knew that she had been injured and knew of at least three potential defendants who had either violated their contract (Musgrove and, on plaintiff's theory, Williams-Sonoma)

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or were being unjustly enriched by the misappropriation of her idea (Allstar)."^[4]

The plaintiff's knowledge of her injury was definite enough that between 2009 and 2012 she consulted...