Brown & Brown Lawsuit: $20M AssuredPartners Deal and Howden Case

The Brown and Brown lawsuit history most people are searching for centers on the Florida-based insurance brokerage’s aggressive enforcement of non-compete and non-solicitation agreements against former employees and rival firms. The company’s most prominent win was a $20 million settlement from AssuredPartners in 2017, which Brown & Brown’s own attorney called “unprecedented in a restrictive covenant case.”¹ Since then it has lost a similar suit against Foundation Risk Partners, and in late 2025 it filed what may become its largest case yet, against Howden US, over the resignation of roughly 275 to 300 employees in a single 48-hour period.

The $20 Million AssuredPartners Settlement

In June 2016, Brown & Brown sued AssuredPartners in Florida state court in Daytona Beach over a group of eight former employees who had moved to the rival brokerage. Brown & Brown alleged AssuredPartners had helped those employees break restrictive covenants prohibiting them from soliciting or servicing Brown & Brown clients for at least two years after leaving.² The departing employees included senior figures from Brown & Brown’s senior care and specialty operations, along with former senior vice president Phil Masi and former commercial insurance agent Negar Sharifi.³

On October 24, 2016, Florida Circuit Judge Dennis Craig issued a temporary injunction finding that the restrictive covenant violations had “caused substantial harm and loss of customers” to Brown & Brown. He ordered AssuredPartners to divest itself of all former Brown & Brown customers it had taken on and required the employees to comply with their two-year restrictive covenants, though they were allowed to keep their AssuredPartners jobs. AssuredPartners disagreed with the ruling. Walter Smith, the firm’s chief counsel, argued that the judge “didn’t find there was solicitation of any customers.”³

The case settled on March 2, 2017, one day before AssuredPartners was scheduled to appear in court to explain why it should not be held in contempt for violating the October injunction.¹ AssuredPartners agreed to pay $20 million to Brown & Brown, with no admission of wrongdoing.⁴ The settlement also barred AssuredPartners from recruiting any Brown & Brown employees in Daytona Beach, Orlando, or Seminole and Orange Counties for 18 months and imposed a six-month nationwide ban on hiring Brown & Brown staff. AssuredPartners agreed to return confidential business information and to stop soliciting Brown & Brown employees.²

Tom Leek, Brown & Brown’s attorney, said the outcome “should serve as notice that Brown & Brown will enforce its restrictive covenants.” AssuredPartners CEO Jim Henderson told reporters the $20 million was “worth it” because it let the firm avoid admitting guilt and keep the employees whose capabilities he valued.¹

The 2011 Origins of the AssuredPartners Feud

The 2016 case was actually the second round. In 2011, two senior Brown & Brown executives, vice chairman and COO Jim Henderson and chief acquisition officer Tom Riley, resigned to found AssuredPartners in Lake Mary, Florida, with $250 million in backing from private equity firm GTCR. Brown & Brown sued that March, alleging Henderson, Riley, and three other former employees had violated two-year non-compete agreements and used confidential information to build the new firm.⁵

That first case settled the same year. AssuredPartners paid undisclosed compensation and agreed to an 18-month ban on hiring or contacting Brown & Brown employees, a prohibition on soliciting Brown & Brown clients until March 2013, and a six-to-twelve-month bar on approaching Brown & Brown’s acquisition targets.⁵

The Foundation Risk Partners Suit Brown & Brown Lost

Not every case has gone Brown & Brown’s way. In October 2018, the company sued former regional president Charlie Lydecker, former retail division CFO Tom Tinsley, and their new firm Foundation Risk Partners in Volusia County, Florida. The complaint brought 28 counts alleging the executives had planned a competing firm while still employed, stolen trade secrets, breached fiduciary duties, and misappropriated a confidential document known as the “100-Day Plan.”⁶⁷

Judge Leah Case of the Seventh Judicial Circuit dismissed eight of the eleven complaints early on, leaving only claims tied to Tinsley’s fiduciary duty, trade secrets, and Foundation Risk Partners’ interference with his contract.⁶ After more than four years of litigation, the court found “insufficient credible evidence” for Brown & Brown’s remaining claims and ruled for the defendants. In December 2022, it ruled the former executives could recover their attorneys’ fees and costs from Brown & Brown.⁸

Brown & Brown initially appealed, then settled, paying what Foundation Risk Partners described as a “multi-seven-figure-dollar payment.” Tom Leek, who had represented Brown & Brown in the AssuredPartners case and was by then Foundation Risk Partners’ chief legal officer, called the suit “always a lawsuit in search of a claim.”⁸

The Active Howden US Lawsuit

Brown & Brown’s most recent and potentially largest talent dispute began in December 2025. Over December 18 and 19, roughly 275 to 300 employees resigned to join Howden US, a new retail brokerage operation that had launched in August 2025 under CEO Mike Parrish.⁹¹⁰ The departed employees came primarily from Brown & Brown’s legacy Hays Companies employee benefits operation, which the company had acquired in 2018 for roughly $705 million.¹¹ Jim Hays, the founder of Hays Companies who had joined Brown & Brown’s board as vice chairman after the acquisition, resigned from that board in 2024 and joined Howden as vice chairman in August 2025.

Brown & Brown’s CEO described the mass departure on a January 2026 analyst call as “one of the most enormous, calculated and predatory schemes of trade secret theft” the industry had seen, saying the timing over the December holiday period was designed to hinder the company’s ability to seek immediate legal relief.¹²

The company filed suit in Massachusetts Superior Court in December 2025, alleging trade secret theft, breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, tortious interference, and unfair competition. A judge issued a temporary restraining order that same month. A second court followed. On May 7, 2026, Hennepin County District Judge Thomas Conley granted a temporary restraining order in Minnesota prohibiting 16 former employees now at Howden from recruiting Brown & Brown staff or soliciting customers, finding both past and ongoing “irreparable harm.”⁹ The Minnesota order did not stop the former employees from continuing to serve clients who had already moved to Howden between December 2025 and May 2026, but it required them to log all work performed for those clients.¹⁰

On a first-quarter 2026 earnings call, Brown & Brown executives reported that Howden had taken customers representing $31 million in annual revenue, with $10 million of that loss occurring in the first quarter of 2026 alone. Howden has defended its hiring practices by arguing that Brown & Brown undercompensated and mistreated the employees.⁹ The case remains active as of mid-2026.

Where Brown & Brown’s Covenants Have Not Held Up

Courts outside Florida have not been uniformly receptive. Brown & Brown sued Theresa A. Johnson, a former New York employee terminated in February 2011, and her new employer Lawley Benefits Group, for allegedly breaching a non-solicitation agreement.¹³ The New York Appellate Division found the non-solicitation clause “overbroad and unenforceable” because it prohibited Johnson from working with any company client, including ones she had never had contact with.¹⁴ The court also struck down the agreement’s Florida choice-of-law provision as “truly obnoxious” to New York public policy: Florida law expressly forbids courts from considering the hardship a restrictive covenant imposes on an employee, while New York requires exactly that consideration.

In June 2015, the New York Court of Appeals agreed the Florida choice-of-law clause was unenforceable and sent the case back for a determination of whether Brown & Brown had “overreached.” Factors included whether the agreement had been explained to Johnson, whether she had been forced to sign on her first day, and whether she had the chance to consult a lawyer. The court noted the agreement was presented on her first day of work, after she had already resigned from her prior employer, and that it had not been mentioned during the hiring process.¹⁴

Why These Lawsuits Keep Happening

Brown & Brown’s disputes are part of a broader wave. Between August 2025 and mid-2026, major brokerages including Marsh, Aon, Willis Towers Watson, and Alliant have all filed or defended similar talent-poaching cases. Much of that litigation traces to Howden’s US expansion, which recruited more than 500 employees from competitors. Industry observers estimate roughly 95% of broker poaching suits settle before trial, with settlements typically ranging from one to three times the annual revenue of the disputed business.¹²

The underlying driver is strategic. Industry acquisition deals averaged $342 million in value by 2021, and some competitors have shifted to a “talent-led” growth model, recruiting entire teams from rivals instead of paying acquisition premiums.¹² That model makes restrictive covenant enforcement central to firms like Brown & Brown, and contested by those trying to compete on talent.

AssuredPartners, the company at the center of Brown & Brown’s earliest and largest covenant fight, was acquired by Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. in a deal valued at $13.45 billion that closed on August 18, 2025.¹⁵¹⁶

1
Daytona Beach News-Journal. Daytona’s Brown & Brown Gets Record $20 Million as Part of Settlement With Rival Insurance Company
2
Insurance Business Magazine. AssuredPartners to Pay $20 Million to End Poaching Suit
3
Risk & Insurance. Brokerage Prevails on Restrictive Agreements
4
Brown & Brown Investor Relations. Brown & Brown, Inc. Settles Lawsuit Against Former Employees and AssuredPartners
5
Daytona Beach News-Journal. Brown & Brown Settles With Former Executives
6
Insurance Business Magazine. Judge Dismisses Brown and Brown Betrayal Complaints Against Rival Company
7
Florida Politics. Foundation Risk Partners Earns Major Legal Win in Battle With Rival Firm
8
Foundation Risk Partners. Brown & Brown Agrees to Pay FRP a Multi-Seven-Figure Settlement
9
Insurance Journal. Brown & Brown Wins TRO Against Howden Over Alleged Employee Raiding
10
Insurance Business Magazine. Brown and Brown Wins TRO Against Howden Over Alleged Employee Raiding
11
Insurance Insider (Jim Hays Declaration). Declaration of James C. Hays
12
Insurance Business Magazine. The Brokerage Industry’s Litigation Epidemic: When Poaching Becomes a Business Model
13
vLex. Brown & Brown, Inc. v. Johnson, 115 A.D.3d 162
14
New York State Unified Court System. Brown & Brown, Inc. v Johnson, 25 NY3d 364
15
Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. Investor Relations. Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. Closes Acquisition of AssuredPartners
16
MergerLinks. Arthur J. Gallagher Completes the Acquisition of AssuredPartners From Apax and GTCR for $13.45bn