Some legal battles end quickly. This one has been going on since 2015, survived a full jury trial, an appeal that wiped out the damages, an entirely new damages retrial, and it’s still not completely over.
A federal judge in New York has upheld a $70 million compensatory damages verdict for the TriZetto Group, a healthcare insurance software company, in its long-running trade secret dispute with Indian IT services company Syntel Inc. At the same time, the judge cut the punitive damages award down significantly, bringing the total combined judgment to roughly $236.9 million.
The Numbers, Broken Down
- $69,977,813 — the exact compensatory damages figure a retrial jury awarded TriZetto in June 2025, upheld by the judge in this latest ruling
- $139,955,626 — the reduced punitive damages award, calculated as exactly two times the compensatory damages figure, down from an original $285 million punitive award from the first trial back in 2020
- $12,395,484.50 — additional attorney fees awarded in this latest ruling, on top of $14,548,992.98 in attorney fees awarded earlier in the case
- ~$236.9 million — the total combined judgment once compensatory damages, reduced punitive damages, and all attorney fees are added together
- $60,927,590+ — the amount of pre-judgment interest calculated separately on the compensatory damages alone, continuing to accrue at roughly $21,604 per day until the case is fully resolved
- 11 years — how long this litigation has been active, dating back to when Syntel first filed suit in 2015
How a Decade-Long Fight Started
Syntel and TriZetto have been locked in litigation since 2015, in a case centered on healthcare insurance administration software. Syntel originally filed the lawsuit itself, seeking a declaratory judgment, but TriZetto counter-sued, accusing Syntel of misappropriating its trade secrets and infringing its copyrights.
The case went to its first full jury trial in 2020, and the jury delivered a sweeping win for TriZetto: over $850 million combined in compensatory and punitive damages, calculated largely under an “avoided costs” theory — essentially, what Syntel would have had to spend to develop the technology honestly instead of allegedly stealing it.
The Appeal That Changed Everything
TriZetto’s massive initial win didn’t survive on appeal. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the jury’s finding that Syntel was, in fact, liable for misappropriating TriZetto’s trade secrets — but it threw out the entire damages calculation. The appeals court ruled that the federal Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) doesn’t actually allow companies to recover damages based on the “avoided costs” theory TriZetto had originally used, at least not under the specific circumstances of this case.
That ruling didn’t let Syntel off the hook — it just meant the damages number needed to be recalculated using a different legal theory entirely, and sent the case back down for a new trial focused specifically on that question.
The Second Trial: A Different Damages Theory
Rather than starting from scratch on liability, the case went back to a jury solely to determine damages, this time under a “lost profits” theory, including something called price erosion — the idea that Syntel’s alleged theft forced TriZetto to lower its own prices to keep major clients from leaving for the now-cheaper competing product Syntel had built using the stolen information.
In June 2025, that retrial jury awarded TriZetto nearly $70 million in compensatory damages under this new theory. Legal analysts have since pointed out that the judge’s handling of this case set an important precedent, endorsing what’s been described as a flexible, fact-based approach to proving price-erosion damages rather than requiring companies to fit their case into one rigid mathematical formula.
The Judge Weighs In
U.S. District Judge Lorna G. Schofield, presiding over the case in the Southern District of New York, issued her ruling on the post-trial motions on March 27, 2026. She upheld the jury’s $70 million compensatory damages figure, concluding, in the court’s own words, that the retrial jury:
“plainly considered the weight of the evidence.”
Syntel had also argued that the entire damages retrial shouldn’t have happened the way it did, claiming it violated the specific instructions the Second Circuit gave when it sent the case back down. The judge rejected that argument too, ruling that the appeals court’s original decision had left the door open for TriZetto to pursue exactly this kind of lost-profits theory, rather than limiting the case only to the rejected “avoided costs” approach.
Why the Punitive Damages Got Slashed
Here’s where the math really shifted. Under the applicable legal framework, punitive damages in cases like this are generally capped at twice the compensatory damages figure. Since the original 2020 trial’s punitive damages award of $285 million was based on the old, much larger (and now-rejected) damages calculation, it no longer matched up with the new $70 million figure.
The judge recalculated punitive damages using the correct formula against the new number, landing on $139,955,626 — exactly double the $69,977,813 compensatory award. The court gave TriZetto the choice to either formally accept this reduced punitive damages figure or go through an entirely new trial specifically on punitive damages alone.
What Happened Next
TriZetto ultimately chose not to gamble on another trial. According to the company’s parent, Cognizant, and Syntel’s parent company, Atos Group (which acquired Syntel back in 2018), an Amended Final Judgment was entered on April 29, 2026, confirming all of the amounts from the March ruling. That judgment also formally calculated pre-judgment interest on the compensatory damages, landing at just over $60.9 million through late April 2026 alone, continuing to grow by roughly $21,604 every single day the case remains unresolved.
Notably, the judgment specified that the punitive damages reduction could be applied as a matter of law, without requiring TriZetto to go through the formal acceptance process or risk a brand-new trial over that portion of the award.
The Story Isn’t Over Yet
Despite the case dragging on for over a decade already, this still isn’t the final chapter. Atos Group has publicly announced it intends to appeal the Amended Final Judgment, meaning this decade-long legal saga is likely headed back to the appeals courts for at least one more round.
For its part, Atos has stated that the judgment, even at its current size, doesn’t represent a material threat to the company’s overall financial position — a notable detail for a case involving a payment obligation approaching a quarter of a billion dollars.
The Bottom Line
What started as a software licensing dispute in 2015 has turned into one of the longest-running trade secret fights in recent memory, complete with a jury verdict worth hundreds of millions, a full appellate reversal, an entirely separate damages retrial, and a final judgment that’s still being contested more than a decade later. The compensatory damages number has held steady through multiple rounds of scrutiny, but with an appeal already announced, this case is a reminder that in trade secret litigation, “final judgment” doesn’t always mean final.
Sources referenced:
Law360 – “TriZetto’s $70M Trade Secret Verdict Upheld, Total Award Cut”
Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP – “Federal Court Approves Flexible Damages Approach in $70 Million Trade-Secret Verdict”
WilmerHale (via Lexology) – “Readily Ascertainable—WilmerHale’s Trade Secret Bulletin: March and April 2026”
Atos Group – “Decision of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York in the TriZetto re-trial”
