David Dayen
@ddayen.bsky.social
88K followers 610 following 9.6K posts
Executive editor, The American Prospect. Author, Chain of Title and Monopolized. Tips at ddayen-at-prospect-dot-org or Signal at ddayen.90
Executive editor, The American Prospect. Author, Chain of Title and Monopolized. Tips at ddayen-at-prospect-dot-org or Signal at ddayen.90
![Internal messages obtained in the lawsuit were revelatory. In October 2020, Brian Hess, a vice president of sales with LaSalle Bristol, wrote to Chris Murray, his counterpart at Patrick, about sales to a particular RV manufacturer, Forest River. “What I wanted to talk to you about is SeaFlow [sic] waterless P-traps,” Hess wrote. “My sales team is telling me that you guys are getting aggressive to try and take this business. We presently have all the business through our Uniguard product.” Hess wanted Murray to stop Patrick sales agents from being “overly aggressive,” which would force LaSalle Bristol to drop prices and “sell the product … at a significantly reduced margin.”
Murray, who signed the Seaflo contract, responded cordially. “I completely understand and appreciate where you are coming from, and certainly support the effort to keep overall margins as high as possible.” LaSalle Bristol kept the business. “Tellingly, Murray did not respond by noting that Patrick Industries was contractually obligated to use its best efforts to promote and maximize the sale of the Seaflo Product and barred from promoting or selling a competing product,” the lawsuit notes.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:nztbvvo2gl4227zuxjf7gog3/bafkreihuv3osv44inokxbphafzsyheyeu5j5m4ibol4xi62bpqfrbsoexm)
![Five years later, by the end of the contract, however, Patrick had only made a partial order of 10,000 more units. It was a loss for Seaflo of about $2 million, and they went to court over the breach of contract. That’s when they learned through discovery that, even before Seaflo and Patrick had signed the agreement, a Patrick subsidiary named LaSalle Bristol was completing work on the exact same plumbing part.
Even though Patrick sales staff acknowledged in internal emails that Seaflo’s part was superior and even cheaper, they prioritized LaSalle Bristol’s version instead, eventually moving one million of its units. This violated a clause in the agreement that said Patrick would not “represent or promote, design, manufacture or distribute, any lines or products that compete with the [Seaflo] Product.”
Seaflo would eventually allege that Patrick deliberately signed it up to the exclusive distributor agreement to capture their own subsidiary’s competition. “The exclusive agreement that was supposed to launch the Seaflo Product became the instrument of its exclusion,” states the revised lawsuit, which was filed in September. The case is ongoing.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:nztbvvo2gl4227zuxjf7gog3/bafkreihsfnwimcmx2qprqv5qp22y54lwiax5kxbrekh3ygqfigycwzuasa)
