Kevin Hart’s Ex-Employees Fighting Restraining Order Over Alleged Company Secrets

Kevin Hart’s Ex-Employees Fighting Restraining Order Over Alleged Company Secrets

Hartbeat sued Eric Eddings and Lesley Gwam in February 2026 in Los Angeles.

Eddings joined the audio and podcast side in 2022. Gwam in April 2023. The company says they had the books — financials, partnership plans, how the division was supposed to grow — and used that while still on payroll to stand up a rival shop. Pitch deck seeking $2 million. Line in the filing: we’ve built this before. Now we’re building it for ourselves.

Hartbeat says a major podcast client walked after alleged mismanagement. They say they learned about the deck January 29, fired the pair January 30, sent a cease-and-desist, then sued for an injunction.

Eddings and Gwam’s papers: no proof they stole anything. They had résumés in the space before Hartbeat. Experience is not a trade secret just because you used it at the last job.

A judge handed Hartbeat a temporary restraining order and refused a wider preliminary injunction as too vague and too broad. In August the same court declined to bury the fight in arbitration after finding the arbitration clauses unconscionable as applied. Public docket stays public.

That is a contract-and-secrets fight, not a mugshot story. Hartbeat is Hart’s entertainment company. Podcasts are a margin business. When two people leave and try to raise two million on “we already built this,” the last employer hears theft. The leavers hear a noncompete wearing a trade-secret costume.

Nothing in the coverage says a jury has picked a winner. Nothing lists the secret in a way that would make it not a secret. The restraining order is the freeze while lawyers argue the temperature.

The photo is Hart on a dark set in the plaid jacket. The case is two names on a caption he is not sitting for. Company secrets is the allegation. Fighting the order is the job their new counsel was hired to do. Court dates will do the rest.