Jobot Lawsuit: $6M Verdict, Injunction, and Enforcement Fight

In December 2025, a federal judge in Miami entered a $6,037,532 judgment against Jobot LLC and three former Hayes Locums recruiters, ruling that the recruiters stole trade secrets and violated non-compete agreements when they left Hayes Medical Staffing to join Jobot. The Jobot lawsuit, formally captioned Hayes Medical Staffing LLC v. Eichelberg, was filed in April 2023 in the Southern District of Florida and decided after a five-day bench trial before Judge David S. Leibowitz.¹²

Who Sued Whom

Hayes Medical Staffing, a Fort Lauderdale locum tenens agency that places physicians on temporary assignments, sued four defendants: former recruiters Amy Eichelberg and Scott Simon; Allison Patierno, another former Hayes recruiter who had already moved to Jobot and become a manager there; and Jobot itself, a Newport Beach, California recruiting firm.¹ The claims arose under the federal Defend Trade Secrets Act, the Florida Uniform Trade Secrets Act, and the recruiters’ nondisclosure, noncompetition, and non-solicitation agreements.

Hayes alleged that before resigning, Eichelberg and Simon emailed proprietary recruiting spreadsheets to their personal accounts. The spreadsheets contained non-public information on thousands of physicians: work preferences, private cell numbers, state licensing details, and internal recruiter notes on client and physician requirements.³ Hayes also alleged that Patierno actively recruited Eichelberg and Simon to Jobot while knowing they were bound by restrictive covenants.

What the Court Found

Judge Leibowitz ruled that Hayes’s recruitment spreadsheets qualified as trade secrets under both federal and Florida law, and that the defendants had misappropriated them.

Eichelberg had blind-copied her personal Gmail on emails containing data on more than 11,000 cardiology providers, then deleted the messages from her work email before resigning. Simon emailed himself a master list with contact information and placement preferences for nearly 12,000 physicians.⁴ Neither returned the data after leaving Hayes, despite separation letters and cease-and-desist notices. The information stayed on their personal devices and cloud accounts until a court-ordered forensic examiner removed it.³

On the non-compete side, Simon’s agreement barred him from soliciting clients or physicians he had worked with during his last two years at Hayes. The court found that shortly after joining Jobot, Simon used the retained data to place a physician he had previously managed at Hayes, Dr. Charles Henderson, at Valley Children’s Hospital, a former Hayes client. Patierno was held liable for intentional interference because she recruited Eichelberg and Simon to leave Hayes while knowing about their restrictive covenants. The court noted that Jobot hired Simon “100% … before Jobot looked at his noncompetition agreement with Hayes.”³

Findings of False Testimony

Judge Leibowitz found two defense witnesses had not testified truthfully. Eichelberg claimed she had blind-copied her personal account only because Hayes’s email server was running slowly and that the files never actually transferred. The court rejected the explanation, pointing to forensic evidence that she had successfully sent or attempted to send the spreadsheets to a second personal account. Simon testified that his retained spreadsheets were “outdated” and that he no longer possessed Hayes data, but the forensic examiner discovered extensive proprietary information still on his devices and cloud storage. The court observed that physician specialties and personal contact details do not generally become outdated, and concluded Simon had not been truthful.³

The Damages Award and Injunction

The court awarded approximately $3.1 million in lost revenue and roughly $2.9 million in lost profits, for a total judgment of $6,037,532 against all four defendants, jointly and severally. The court also enforced the non-compete agreements’ time-tolling provisions, barring Eichelberg and Simon from competing with Hayes for one year and from soliciting Hayes clients and employees for two years. All four defendants were permanently prohibited from using Hayes’s confidential information.²

The Fight Over Enforcement

Collection moved fast. In January 2026 the court entered final judgment against Jobot and the co-defendants. A magistrate judge recommended denying Jobot’s motion to pause enforcement in February, and on March 13, 2026, the district judge adopted that recommendation. Four days later, the court clerk issued a writ of garnishment directed at Jobot’s account at PNC Bank.⁵

Jobot’s inability to post a supersedeas bond drove the dispute. A defendant can normally pause enforcement by posting bond, and Jobot acknowledged having the cash to cover the $6.64 million bond amount. But doing so, it argued, would drop its bank balance below a $5 million minimum required under an April 2025 financing agreement with Sandton Capital Solutions Fund VI, LP. That agreement, covering a loan of more than $50 million, treats a drop below $5 million as a default event, potentially making the entire loan balance immediately due. Jobot told the court it would “have no choice but to go out of business and file for bankruptcy” without a stay.⁵

Instead of a traditional bond, Jobot proposed keeping $7 million in its own bank account as collateral. Hayes called it a “pinky promise,” arguing the account would remain under Jobot’s exclusive control with no independent oversight, and that Jobot was already contractually obligated to keep $5 million on hand anyway, making the additional pledge negligible.⁴

On March 27, 2026, the Eleventh Circuit denied Jobot’s emergency motion to stay execution. The appeals court gave several reasons: the financing agreement that prevented Jobot from posting bond was signed after the bench trial concluded, making the hardship self-inflicted; the trial court’s findings rested on credibility determinations that receive maximum deference on appeal; and Jobot is a defendant in at least ten other active lawsuits, raising concerns about whether the judgment would remain collectible during a lengthy appeal.⁴ As of mid-2026, the appeal on the merits remains pending, and Jobot has not filed for bankruptcy despite its earlier warnings.⁵

Other Jobot Litigation

The Hayes case is not the only active lawsuit against Jobot. The Eleventh Circuit’s stay order noted at least ten pending cases.⁴ Two appear in public records:

Aerotek, Inc. v. Jobot LLC (M.D.N.C., 2022), a trademark suit brought by Aerotek, an Allegis Group subsidiary. Aerotek alleged that a former Aerotek employee, Corey Dalton, copied his Aerotek biographical profile onto Jobot’s website, creating the false impression that Jobot job postings were Aerotek positions. The outcome is not detailed in available records.⁶
Drew J. Fibus v. Jobot LLC (Orange County Superior Court, 2025), a wrongful termination suit filed in May 2025 in California state court. The case is active, with a jury trial scheduled for April 2027.⁷

A Different Outcome in Another Circuit

The Florida verdict against Jobot should not be read as a universal rule. In July 2025, the Fourth Circuit ruled in a case where Allegis Group and its subsidiary Aston Carter sued a former employee, Christopher Bero, who had left to join Jobot. The appeals court sided with Bero, finding his non-solicitation and nondisclosure covenants either unenforceable or not violated under Maryland law, and construing contractual ambiguities against the employer.⁸ The result turned on state law and contract language, and it illustrates how much the enforceability of a recruiter’s non-compete can shift from one jurisdiction to another.

1
CourtListener. Hayes Medical Staffing LLC v. Eichelberg
2
Staffing Legal News. Hayes Wins $6 Million From Jobot and Former Hayes Employees
3
ALM Assets. Order of Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law
4
Staffing Legal News. Eleventh Circuit Rules No Judgement Stay for Jobot
5
Staffing Legal News. Hayes Goes for the Jugular Jobots Bank Account Under Siege
6
Staffing Legal News. Aerotek Sues Jobot and Former Employee for Trademark Infringement
7
Docket Alarm. Drew J. Fibus vs. Jobot LLC
8
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Allegis Group Inc. v. Bero