Moxie Pest Control (UTAH), LLC v. Nielsen.
No. 24-4076. 1/21/2026. D.Utah. Judge Moritz. Misuse of Company Data—Computer Fraud and Abuse Act—Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act—Defend Trade Secrets Act—Utah Uniform Trade Secrets Act—Causation—Motion to Dismiss—Summary Judgment—Statutory Loss Requirement—Scope of Discovery—Remedies.
January 21, 2026
Moxie Pest Control (UTAH), LLC and Aptive Environmental, LLC are competitors in the pest-control business, and each brings in tens of thousands of dollars in annual revenue. To sell their services, they use door-to-door sales representatives, who are typically college students working on commission. Because their business turns on volume, the companies compete to hire the most representatives for each summer sales season. In 2019 and 2020, employees of Aptive Environmental bribed members of Moxie Pest Control (UTAH), LLC and over a dozen other affiliates (collectively, Moxie) to give them Moxie’s confidential sales data, which was allegedly used to recruit sales representatives for the summer sales season. Moxie sued Aptive Environmental and several of its employees (collectively, Aptive) for this misuse of its data. It brought claims under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA); the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO); the federal Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA); and Utah’s Uniform Trade Secrets Act (UTSA). The district court (1) dismissed the CFAA claim as inadequately pleaded, on Aptive’s motion; (2) denied Moxie’s motions to compel broad discovery into damages; and (3) granted Aptive summary judgment on Moxie’s RICO, DTSA, and UTSA claims on causation grounds.
On appeal, Moxie argued that the district court erred in granting Aptive’s Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss the CFAA claim for not plausibly alleging the statutory loss requirement. Moxie’s complaint alleged over $5,000 in costs resulting from an investigation of the Aptive breach. The CFAA bars unauthorized access to computers and provides a cause of action to persons who lose at least $5,000 in a single year due to an 18 USC § 1030 violation. Under the CFAA, “loss” includes “any reasonable cost to any victim, including the cost of responding to an offense[ or] conducting a damage assessment.” § 1030(e)(11). Here, the district court ruled that Moxie’s investigative costs didn’t satisfy the CFAA loss requirement after Van Buren v. United States, 593 U.S. 374 (2021). However, Van Buren didn’t say, in dicta or otherwise, that the damages available when an individual violates the CFAA are limited to technological harms. So contrary to the district court’s conclusion, the CFAA does not require plaintiffs to plead loss from a technological harm, and Moxie’s failure to do so was not fatal under Rule 12(b)(6).
Moxie also contended that the district court abused its discretion when it did not compel production of evidence relevant to damages. Here, Moxie’s discovery requests broadly sought information on Aptive’s policies, strategies, communications, and data, including information on each Aptive sales representative. The district court limited the scope of Aptive’s initial disclosures, ordering more specific disclosures focused on former Moxie representatives recruited to work for Aptive. Further, the court allowed Moxie to pursue additional relevant discovery once those initial disclosures were complete. Therefore, the court did not abuse its discretion.
Moxie additionally challenged the court’s entry of summary judgment, contesting the court’s assessment of the record evidence on causation and how that assessment impacts the viability of its claims. Here, Moxie didn’t dispute that a lack of causation precludes RICO liability. But as to Moxie’s DTSA and UTSA claims, while the lack of causation evidence precluded Moxie from recovering unjust enrichment damages under those statutes, Moxie also sought reasonable royalties and injunctive relief, neither of which requires the same proof of causation as unjust enrichment under DTSA and UTSA. Because these remedies don’t turn on causation in the way unjust enrichment does, Moxie’s failure to prove causation was not fatal to its DTSA and UTSA claims. Here, the district court said nothing in its summary judgment order about reasonable royalty damages, and it overlooked the availability of an injunction when it granted Aptive summary judgment. The district court should have examined the viability of Moxie’s DTSA and UTSA claims in light of those remedies before granting Aptive summary judgment.
The dismissal of Moxie’s CFAA claim was reversed. The district court’s discovery order and its summary judgment decision in favor of Aptive on the RICO claims were affirmed. The summary judgment decision on the DTSA and UTSA claims was affirmed in part and reversed in part, and the case was remanded for further proceedings.