Opinion ID: 220657
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The district court's contempt findings

Text: In his first issue on appeal, Donald Bowers contends the district court erred in holding him in contempt of its injunctive orders. In support, Donald Bowers asserts four subissues: (1) ClearOne's experts did not and could not show that DialHD's products contained the Honeybee Code; (2) even assuming the DialHD products incorporated the Honeybee object code, he could not be held responsible for misappropriating ClearOne's trade secret because there was no evidence he ever had possession of the Honeybee source code; (3) he did not transfer any assets in violation of the district court's June 26, 2008 TRO; and (4) he complied with the district court's discovery and disclosure requests to the best of his ability. We review a district court's determination of civil contempt for abuse of discretion. United States v. Ford, 514 F.3d 1047, 1051 (10th Cir.2008) (internal quotation marks omitted). A district court abuses its discretion if the court's adjudication of the contempt proceedings is based upon an error of law or a clearly erroneous finding of fact. Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). As the moving party in this case, ClearOne had the initial burden of proving, by clear and convincing evidence, that a valid court order existed, that [Donald Bowers] had knowledge of the order, and that [Donald Bowers] disobeyed the order. Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). Once [ClearOne] made that showing, the burden then shifted to [Donald Bowers] to show either that he had complied with the order or that he could not comply with it. Id.