The US Supreme Court rejected an appeal filed by India-based Tata Consultancy Services seeking to overturn a $168 million damages award handed down by a lower court in favour of DXC Technology. The case involved allegations that Tata unlawfully obtained trade secrets related to life-insurance software and used them to develop a competing platform.
The damages comprised $56 million in compensatory awards and $112 million in punitive damages owed to Ashburn, Virginia-based DXC. The original lawsuit, initiated in Dallas federal court in 2019, alleged that Tata engaged 2,200 Transamerica staff members and leveraged their knowledge of CSC's proprietary information—CSC being DXC's predecessor—to construct a rival insurance platform.
Tata contested the allegations, contending that the information in question lacked protected status and that access to the software was lawful. When the matter reached a jury in 2023, an advisory verdict recommended Tata pay DXC $210 million for deliberate misappropriation. U.S. District Judge Brantley Starr subsequently reduced this figure to $168 million, a decision upheld by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2025.
In challenging the award before the Supreme Court, Tata argued that unjust enrichment damages should require proof of actual losses incurred by DXC. The company also maintained that the punitive portion of the judgment was disproportionately high. DXC countered that the appellate court's ruling was sound and required no further examination by the nation's highest court.
