Steve Martini - Double Tap

“Your Honor, may I have a moment?” I lean over toward Harry.

“Templeton’s secretary told me they’d notify Isotenics,” Harry whispers.

“Did they confirm it in writing?”

Harry shakes his head, shrugs a shoulder. He doesn’t know, but if Harry can’t remember seeing one, chances are they didn’t.

“I’m told, Your Honor, that the people, through Mr. Templeton’s secretary, assured us that they would notify Isotenics as to the extended date for production of documents.”

Sims turns to look down at Templeton in the chair behind him. Templeton raises two empty hands, open palms up toward the ceiling. “That’s news to me. I don’t know anything about it,” he says.

“So apparently nobody notified the company?” says the judge.

“Apparently,” says Templeton.

“I don’t remember signing any order shortening time,” says Gilcrest.

“You didn’t, Your Honor. You were out of town. We had to go to the presiding judge,” says Sims.

They have sandbagged us. Gilcrest knows it-you can see it in his eyes-but for the moment there is nothing he can do. “Very well. You may proceed.”

Sims steps up to the wooden rostrum, situated just in front of and between the two counsel tables in the center of the courtroom. “Your Honor, as you know, the victim in this case was the chief executive officer and chairperson of the board of directors of my client company Isotenics. In those capacities she was privy to extensive amounts of vital information relating to commercial and proprietary trade information belonging to the company. Many of the documents that she prepared and the correspondence that she sent and received included sensitive corporate information. This information, should it fall into the hands of business competitors, would place Isotenics at a serious disadvantage. It is conceivable that disclosure of some of this information would allow competitors not only in this country but abroad to take unfair competitive advantage that might very well destroy the company economically. Because the disclosure of this information would in many cases result in the loss of valuable trade secrets that could be exploited by competitors-which in turn would cause irreparable injury to my client-we are requesting not only that the items subpoenaed by the defense and listed on our schedule be quashed, but that the court issue a preliminary injunction precluding the defense or any of its agents or attorneys from making inquiries or conducting investigations that might invade these areas. We are asking that Mr. Madriani and his associates be kept away and precluded from contacting employees, officers, or agents of Isotenics, Incorporated.”

“Your Honor”-I am on my feet-“I’ve never heard of such a thing. Isotenics is where the victim worked. It is entirely possible, and highly probable, that her interest in the company and her activities at work led to her death.”

“Mr. Madriani, you’ll have an opportunity. You’ll get your chance.” Gilcrest motions me to sit.

Sims then launches into a twenty-minute lecture on the law of business secrets. To listen to him, not since the Medicis ruled Florence has the world of commerce and trade been so threatened by commercial intrigues. According to Sims, it is necessary that virtually every scrap of paper that the victim touched be guarded by an impenetrable wall of secrecy until it can be scrutinized by lawyers and software wizards inside the company. He cites the Uniform Trade Secrets Act. Gilcrest sits attentively and listens as Sims tells him about conclaves of lawyers and lawmakers convening in councils like cardinals in the High Middle Ages, not to hammer out religious dogma enshrined in papal bulls, but to lay down laws in the form of treaties to protect the formula for Coca-Cola and the recipe for Hershey’s Kisses, sacred processes that form the root and stock of multinational corporate fortunes.

Sims then makes the leap. He hoists the defense of trade secrets to cover Chapman’s e-mails, everything sent and received as well as all hard-copy correspondence and internal company memos regarding IFS and the Primis software system. He uses the argument of trade secrets like a shield, trying to push us away, to keep us at bay while Templeton gets at our innards with his short sword from underneath.

“The IFS project and the software that underlies it,” says Sims, “are the economic cornerstone of Isotenics. Mr. Madriani would ransack internal memoranda of the company on a wild-goose chase, the result of which would be to ruin my client’s company.” Sims then makes an offer of proof. He tells the court that he has two witnesses.

Gilcrest waves him on.

Sims calls Victor Havlitz to the stand.

Havlitz has been locked out and sitting on a hard bench in the outer corridor. The bailiff has to unlock the door and call his name.

Not being a party to the proceedings, Havlitz has no legal right to be here other than to testify if he is called. He has ended up on both our witness list and the prosecution’s. As a result, he will be excluded from the guilt-or-innocence phase of the trial in which the name of his company is likely to figure prominently in daily news accounts. For a guy like Havlitz, whose anxiety level is taut as goat gut strung on a violin, waiting to hear the news each day is likely to kill him.

Havlitz is sworn and takes the stand.

Sims moves quickly through the preliminaries.

“To your knowledge, has an effort been made,” says Sims, “to identify and to produce those portions or items of the subpoenaed materials that would not violate the confidentiality requirements of your company or result in the disclosure of trade secrets?”

This has all been well scripted. Havlitz launches into detail, telling the judge that he supervised this process personally. To listen to him talk, Isotenics wore out at least one machine copying pages that were delivered to our office. At one point Havlitz pulls a slip of paper from the pocket of his suit coat and tells the judge that, in all, they copied 1,214 pages that were delivered to our office.

What he doesn’t say is that many of these were copied four or five times and that nearly all of them were documents that had previously been published in corporate reports, materials prepared for the unwashed shareholders and mailed to them or handed out at their annual meetings. If the company were in bankruptcy, its assets had fallen through a crack into hell and burned, and if all of the directors were under indictment for fraud, you would never read about any of it in the pages turned over by Havlitz. In the original, most of these would have been four-color and glossy. One of them showed Havlitz’s smiling face peering out like a flimflam man when I flipped the first stapled page. In all the copied pages, there was nothing about pissing contests and shouting matches on the phone between Chapman and Gerald Satz, not even in the footnotes.

“With regard to the other items,” says Sims, “the materials you deemed confidential. Did these items involve information or data of a sensitive commercial nature concerning proprietary trade matters?” Sims recites the magic words as if they were sacred script. If it would do any good to brace his argument, he would shake a bag of freeze-dried bones in front of the witness to complete the hex on our case-lord high legal shaman.

“They did,” says Havlitz.

“And in your opinion, as the chief executive of Isotenics, would public disclosure or the risk of public disclosure of these materials cause damage to your company that would result in irreparable injury?”

“Absolutely, without question,” says Havlitz.

“Your witness,” says Sims.

Templeton is smiling through all of this, the chance to stick a pike through the heart of our case without even moving his lips. He is taking up half a wooden chair from the row behind the prosecution table just inside the railing. This time he is using one of the courtroom’s metal waste cans turned upside down to rest his feet so they don’t dangle in midair from the platform of the chair. Today he has wound Sims up like a coiled spring and turned him loose in court to see what kind of havoc he can wreak in our case.