Nucor, SeverCorr settle lawsuit

Mic Smith
The Post and Courier

A worker checks steel produced inside the cold mill at Nucor’s Berkeley plant. The company settled a lawsuit with SeverCorr over techniques Nucor said were given by a former employer to their competitor.

For 18 years, John Bell developed metallurgical techniques that helped mold Nucor Corp. into one of the country's most powerful steel makers, cooking up many strategies at the company's Berkeley County mill.

When he resigned in 2006, he took trade secrets to a competitor, according to Nucor, which has been fighting a legal battle with Bell and his present employer for almost two years.

Bell and Mississippi-based SeverCorr LLC said Nucor had no secrets in the business of melting and repouring metal and was simply trying to squash an upstart competitor.

The parties stopped stoking their legal fire this week by settling the lawsuit. Bell agreed not to help his company make certain kinds of steel for almost a year, while SeverCorr agreed not to produce or market those same grades of steel until September 2009. Financial terms were not disclosed.

"Nucor's advancements in steel making have helped us become one of the largest, most profitable steel makers in the world," Dan DiMicco, Nucor's president and chief executive officer, said in a statement Tuesday. "These advances are the direct result of the hard work of all of our employees, and we have an obligation to our employees and shareholders to protect the intellectual property, confidential information and trade secrets associated with the advancements made through our collective efforts. That is what we did in this case; that is what we will do in the future."

The deal concludes a rift that started deep in the bedrock of the U.S. steel industry. Bell was hired away from Nucor by SeverCorr founder John D. Correnti, a steel industry veteran who was ousted as president and CEO of

Nucor in 1999.

Nucor's lawyers did not return calls or respond to e-mails Tuesday. But the company said Bell was an integral piece of its steel making machine.

Bell was hired by Nucor in 1987 as a melt shop manager. A hands-on chief with a master's degree in metallurgical engineering, he rose fast, jumping to the Berkeley mill in 1995. He spent his days on the shop floor, developing tools and techniques that helped Nucor gain a substantial competitive edge, according to the lawsuit. Most notably, he created a process to cool steel more slowly to make it less prone to cracking.

By the time he resigned in March 2006, Bell had risen to general manager of steel making technologies at Nucor. He knew virtually everything about his employer, from its equipment and production speeds to its pricing and salaries, according to the lawsuit.

Nucor sued Bell and SeverCorr about seven months after the split, noting that Bell had signed confidentiality agreements. Nucor also alleged Bell took "highly classified" documents from his work computer days after leaving.

Bell's and SeverCorr's attorneys fought the allegations and filed a countersuit against Charlotte-based Nucor.

Bell, an executive vice president and general manager of operations at SeverCorr, was not at his Mount Pleasant home Tuesday and did not return calls to his Columbus, Miss., office.

A SeverCorr spokesman did not return phone calls Tuesday. The company said in a statement that the settlement will have no "material effect" on its annual production.

Reach Kyle Stock at 937-5763 or kstock@postandcourier.com.