The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to step into a bruising Dallas trade-secrets fight, leaving intact a roughly $168 million judgment against Tata Consultancy Services and handing a major win to DXC Technology's predecessor, Computer Sciences Corp.
The unsigned order today shuts down Tata's latest attempt to undo a jury finding that it misused access to CSC's software to help build a competing life-insurance platform. Years of work by a Dallas federal judge and the Fifth Circuit stay right where they are.
According to Reuters, the justices declined to hear Tata's petition, which means the damages award remains in place. Tata had urged the court to review whether an award calculated largely as unjust enrichment could stand without proof of actual monetary harm to DXC.
Case background
CSC, now part of DXC, sued Tata in 2019 in federal court in Dallas, alleging that TCS used access to CSC materials and rebadged Transamerica employees to help develop its BaNCS insurance platform, according to the company's petition to the U.S. Supreme Court (U.S. Supreme Court).
A jury in November 2023 returned an advisory verdict totaling about $210 million. The district judge later trimmed the award to roughly $56 million in compensatory damages and $112 million in exemplary damages, for a $168 million judgment, according to the high court filings. With prejudgment interest, DXC says the figure comes to about $194 million, per the company's filing with the SEC.
Appeals and the Fifth Circuit
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit largely sided with DXC in late 2025, affirming the district court's monetary rulings while narrowing the scope of the injunction, according to Bloomberg Law. The panel left the dollar figures untouched but sent the injunction back to the trial court for a more tailored remedy.
Tata's challenge
Tata's Supreme Court petition pressed two main issues: whether unjust-enrichment damages are available under the Defend Trade Secrets Act without proof of actual losses, and whether the punitive portion of the award was excessive, according to its filing and coverage in Law360.
The company argued that pegging damages to avoided development costs could not substitute for proof that DXC suffered concrete monetary harm. In Tata's view, that kind of measure turns trade-secrets cases into what it effectively casts as high-priced thought experiments.
Legal implications
By denying certiorari, the Supreme Court leaves the Fifth Circuit's decision in place without endorsing its reasoning. That technical but important nuance is familiar to appellate lawyers, even if it is less than satisfying for parties staring at nine-figure judgments.
Observers say the outcome will be closely watched by tech vendors, outsourcers, and insurers, particularly for what it signals about how unjust-enrichment theories can generate substantial awards when lost profits are difficult to pin down, according to commentary from Legal Clarity.
What happens next
With the Supreme Court out of the fray, the case heads back to the Northern District of Texas to hammer out the final language of the injunction, address attorney fees, and sort out any remaining interest questions. Once that is done, the focus shifts to enforcing and collecting on the judgment.
DXC has not yet booked the award as income while the post-appeal work continues, according to its SEC filing.
DXC CEO Raul Fernandez said the appeals ruling "reinforces the principles we stand for" and emphasized the company's commitment to protecting mission-critical systems, according to a company release (DXC). Tata has maintained in its filings that the award is legally unsupportable. With the justices sitting this one out, those arguments will now play out in the lower court rather than on the nation's highest bench.
