SAN FRANCISCO — Direct Marketing Experts, Westlake Village, CA, a direct response agency specializing in list acquisition, recently filed a complaint with the Superior Court of California against Dun & Bradstreet, Murray Hill, NJ, and used the DMA's fall show to spread the word about the lawsuit.
The company is suing D&B for $3 million. In the suit, which has been moved to a federal court in Los Angeles, DME alleges that D&B interfered with a contractual relationship DME had with one of its clients, Labor Ready Inc., Tacoma., WA, a temporary employment company specializing in manual day labor.
DME was supposedly contracted by Labor Ready to supply the complete D&B business database of 11 million records for a one-year term as well as related database analysis services and quarterly updates, but the suit alleges that D&B offered to sell the same database directly for $60,000.
According to a press release from DME that was heavily distributed at the fall show, D&B's move was to undercut DME and make it appear that DME was “price-gouging” the client, thus attempting to effectively undermine DME's broker-client relationship.
Calls to D&B after the show were not returned.
