Kevin Hart's Hartbeat is suing two former podcast employees over trade secrets

Kevin Hart's Hartbeat has a new legal front to manage. Court documents obtained by TMZ reveal that the media company sued two former podcast division employees in February for alleged trade secret theft and breach of contract, and is now fighting those same employees in court as they push back against an injunction request that a judge has already partially rejected.

The two former employees are Eric Eddings, who joined Hartbeat in 2022, and Lesley Gwam, who was hired in April 2023. Both worked in the company's podcast and audio division. According to Hartbeat's suit, the pair had access to extensive confidential and proprietary information, including financial performance data, partnership strategies and business plans specific to the audio operation. The company alleges they used that access to develop a competing podcast business while still on Hartbeat's payroll, and that they created and circulated an investor pitch deck seeking to raise $2 million for the new venture.

Their alleged pitch to investors contained a line that Hartbeat's lawyers quoted in the filing: "We've built this before. Now we're building it for ourselves."

The company says the consequences were commercial as well as legal. Hartbeat claims one of its largest podcasting clients declined to renew its contract in late 2025 because of Eddings' alleged mismanagement. On January 30, 2026, one day after Hartbeat says it discovered the pitch deck, both employees were fired. A cease and desist followed within days. The lawsuit and injunction request came shortly after.

The judge granted a temporary restraining order but rejected a broader preliminary injunction, describing Hartbeat's claims as too vague and overly broad. That partial rejection is significant: it means the company cannot currently use the court to broadly prevent Eddings and Gwam from working in podcasting or media, only to restrain specific alleged misuse of confirmed confidential information.

Eddings and Gwam are fighting back directly. In their own legal filings, they called Hartbeat's injunction request meritless and described it as a poorly veiled attempt to prevent them from working in their own industry. They denied misappropriating any confidential information and said their pitch deck drew on standard industry knowledge that had nothing to do with Hartbeat's proprietary data. Eddings, who worked at Sirius XM before joining Hartbeat, pointed out that his background in audio long predates his time at the company. Gwam made a similar argument about her own experience. Both said they only began working on their new company after Hartbeat made severe cuts to the podcast division, and that they never pitched investors or developed show concepts while employed. The company has not yet launched, and they say the lawsuit has created a chilling effect that makes it difficult to have even basic conversations with potential investors.

The legal dispute adds a specific and documented chapter to the broader story of Hartbeat's turbulence. Bloomberg's May 10 investigation detailed a year of chaos that included multiple rounds of layoffs, executive departures and stalled projects, leading to Hart stepping in to oversee day-to-day operations personally. In December 2025, the company cut roughly 12 employees, many of them from the podcast department. In January 2026, Hart licensed his name, image and likeness to Authentic Brands Group, the brand management company whose portfolio includes Shaquille O'Neal and David Beckham. Many employees read that deal as a signal the full media operation was being scaled back. The podcast lawsuit, running in parallel, reflects how the consequences of those cuts are now playing out in court.