Brown & Brown Inc. has secured a temporary restraining order (TRO) blocking a group of former employees from soliciting and serving certain clients, after alleging that they breached employment agreements when they resigned to join Howden US Services LLC.
According to a report from Best Wire, citing the order issued by Hennepin County District Court, Brown & Brown said that, in addition to 40 staff who left its Minnesota office, nearly 300 employees across the US resigned without prior notice and moved to Howden.
The case is one of several poaching lawsuits Howden is defending around the country, with the broker accused of “raiding” rivals as it builds out its US retail operation. Howden launched that unit in August 2025, led by former Marsh executive Mike Parrish, and has since hired hundreds of staff from competitors including Marsh, Aon, WTW, Brown & Brown and Alliant.
At the center of the Minnesota matter is Hays Group Inc., which Brown & Brown acquired in 2018 for $750 million. Following the sale, Hays Group founder Jim Hays joined Brown & Brown’s board.
Hays resigned from the board in 2024 and became Howden’s vice chairman in August 2025, a month after the company launched its US retail brokerage operations, the court order said.
The order stated that, as part of their employment with Hays, the defendants signed agreements governing the use of confidential company information and the solicitation of employees and clients. Some employees were paid or otherwise rewarded for entering into these contracts, while others’ continued employment was contingent on signing them.
Brown & Brown alleged that those agreements were breached in the run‑up to the mass departures. The court order cited one former employee who allegedly made offers to 31 colleagues the day before the mass resignation, with 27 reportedly accepting. Other defendants are accused of accessing and transmitting compensation data to help facilitate offers from Howden, while some sought advice from Howden’s legal team on how to move across.
The order also noted that some insurance customers were aware of the legal backdrop. In one instance, a client requested legal guidance on transferring its business to Howden before Brown & Brown filed for an injunction to enforce a non‑compete agreement, the report said.
The court has ordered more than a dozen named defendants to comply with their nondisclosure, nonsolicitation and non‑recruitment obligations. They have also been told to return Brown & Brown’s property and any confidential information.
A further three defendants have been directed to abide by their contractual terms, including restrictions on the use of company property and confidential information, as well as provisions not to solicit or service former clients.
However, the order carved out an exception allowing Howden employees to continue servicing former Brown & Brown customers that moved their business between Dec. 18, 2025, and May 7, 2026, the date the TRO was issued. While they may continue acting for those clients, the court has required them to keep a log of all work performed from that point forward.
In granting the TRO, the court found that Brown & Brown had shown it faced irreparable harm due to alleged breaches of employment contracts and that it is likely to succeed on the merits of its claims.
Howden declined to comment on the litigation. Attempts to obtain comment from Brown & Brown were unsuccessful, Best Wire reported.
The Minnesota order is the latest chapter in a broader legal battle over team moves and restrictive covenants in the US brokerage market.
Brown & Brown first filed suit against Howden in December 2025, alleging that more than 200 employees resigned around the same time to join the new US platform; industry sources later put the number closer to 300 as the build‑out continued. Separately, a Massachusetts court issued a TRO in early January 2026 in a related Brown & Brown case, after the company alleged a nationwide employee‑poaching scheme by Howden US.
Howden is also facing actions from Aon, Marsh, WTW and Alliant over alleged breaches of employment agreements and misuse of confidential information tied to recruitment campaigns. Aon sued in December 2025, claiming a former managing director helped orchestrate the move of his team to Howden and directed the transfer of Aon confidential materials before resigning. Other filings describe Howden’s strategy as a rapid push to gain scale in US commercial retail broking.
Industry analysis suggests Howden US has hired several hundred people from rival brokers since launching, with litigation increasingly seen as a cost of doing business in a highly competitive talent market.
The Brown & Brown actions focus on confidentiality and non-solicitation and non-recruitment obligations rather than pure non-compete clauses, reflecting a wider shift among employers as regulators and courts scrutinize the use of broad non-compete provisions.
The litigation also raises questions around continuity of service and choice of adviser. Courts in these cases have so far tried to balance enforcement of contracts with continuity for customers that have already moved: in the Minnesota order, Howden staff can keep servicing accounts that transferred during a defined window, but must log ongoing work and may be restricted from soliciting additional business.
The disputes underline the importance of understanding the scope of existing covenants before planning any move, and of how courts in key jurisdictions are approaching mass resignations and coordinated team lifts as competition for talent intensifies, the report said.
