(Reuters) - A Pennsylvania law firm has accused four of its former lawyers of stealing files, shredding documents, deleting emails and breaching their fiduciary duties when they left to help Armstrong Teasdale launch a Delaware office last month.

A spokeswoman for Armstrong Teasdale declined to comment on the allegations against the firm's newest partners, which appeared in a lawsuit filed earlier this month by the lawyers' former firm, Elliott Greenleaf.

The defendants, Rafael Zahralddin-Aravena, Shelley Kinsella, Eric Sutty and Jonathan Stemerman, joined Armstrong Teasdale in January with a fifth defendant, paralegal Maryann Millis, spearheading Armstrong Teasdale's new office in Wilmington, Delaware. None of the defendants responded to requests for comment.

The lawsuit, filed in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, Court of Common Pleas on Feb. 5, alleges that the partners "secretly planned" for months to leave Elliott Greenleaf for Armstrong Teasdale. They gave only three days' notice and hampered the firm's ability to compete in Delaware, Elliott Greenleaf alleged.

"There is a right way and a wrong way for attorneys to migrate from one law firm to another, and based on the contents of the complaint, you can tell we strongly believe that these ex-employees chose the wrong way," said Mark Schwemler, an Elliott Greenleaf shareholder who is representing the firm in the lawsuit. He declined to comment further.

The lawsuit alleges that Zahralddin-Aravena, Kinsella and Sutty began plotting to leave Elliott Greenleaf in October; by the first week of November, they decided to join Armstrong Teasdale.

At that point, the defendants began secretly copying client files and correspondence and firm work products, the lawsuit alleged. They also deleted emails and other computer data while shredding and destroying physical documents, the law firm alleged.

In particular, Elliott Greenleaf accused Zahralddin-Aravena of ordering a legal intern to download a large number of corporate template documents from Westlaw, a Thomson Reuters service, and save them to his personal Google Docs account so he could access them once he left the firm.

The law firm also alleged that the defendants attempted to hide their tracks by "double-deleting" their emails – after deleting emails from their inbox and sent folders, they again deleted them from their deleted email folders.

Armstrong Teasdale was not named as a defendant in the lawsuit, but the complaint references the firm and several of its attorneys by name, including managing partner David Braswell; Richard Scheff, who is in charge of East Coast strategic growth; and Richard Engel, the chair of the firm's bankruptcy and debtor/creditor relations subgroup.

Elliott Greenleaf alleged that several attorneys at Armstrong Teasdale knew of the defendants' pending departures before it did. The defendants informed Elliott Greenleaf of their departures on Dec. 28, effective three days later.

"The resignation of all of the lawyers in the Wilmington office, with just a few days advance notice in the middle of a holiday season, would render the firm's Wilmington office inoperable after the end of the year," the firm alleged.

And it's not just client files the defendants allegedly took. Elliott Greenleaf also accused them of taking the office's furniture and placing it into storage.

The complaint also alleged that the departing lawyers breached their fiduciary duties to Elliott Greenleaf and failed to give clients "ample advance notice" of their departures jointly with the firm.

"Defendants' misconduct and their purposefully abrupt notifications of the December 28, 2020 resignations made complying with this ethically required process impossible. Elliott Greenleaf alleged.

Armstrong Teasdale announced the four partners' arrival on Jan. 4, marking the seventh new office the firm had opened in two years. Zahralddin-Aravena said in the announcement that their hiring allows Armstrong Teasdale to serve as "lead counsel, co-counsel, or special counsel across a variety of matters" in any Delaware court or agency proceeding.

The case is Elliott Greenleaf v. Rafael X. Zahralddin-Aravena, et al., Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, Court of Common Please, No. 2021-01427.

For Elliott Greenleaf: Mark Schwemler, Frederick Santarelli and Colin O'Boyle of Elliott Greenleaf.