A California judge last week ordered Phillips 66 to pay $195 million in damages for stealing trade secrets from a biofuel company.
What happened: Alameda Superior Court Judge Michael Markman ruled that Phillips 66, one of the country’s largest refiners, used a proposal to buy Sacramento-based Propel Fuels to gain access to the company’s business information and support its own biofuel division.
The punitive damages Markman awarded, which are meant to punish Phillips 66 for egregious misconduct, come on top of $605 million in compensatory damages a jury ordered the company to pay in October following a trial over the allegations of stolen trade secrets.
Why it matters: Phillips 66 converted its gasoline refinery in the Bay Area city of Rodeo to produce renewable biofuels, starting operations in 2022. The move to renewables became all the more significant when the company announced in October that it would close its Los Angeles oil refinery by the end of this year.
