I want to start briefly with our document production, which is due on Friday. We are making good progress. And I am expecting that by Friday we will be able to produce documents that are at Uber that are responsive to the Court’s order. Now — THE COURT: Responsive or all documents? MR. GONZÁLEZ: Well — THE COURT: That’s a cleverly worded thing. I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. I know what you’re telling me.
.. And if you think for a moment that I’m going to stay my hand, because your guy is taking the Fifth Amendment, and not issue a preliminary injunction to shut down what happened here, you’re wrong. This is a very serious — now, some of the things in your motion are bogus. You’ve got things in there like lists of suppliers as trade secrets. Come on. It undermines the whole thing.
But there are some things in that motion that are very serious. They are genuine trade secrets. And if you don’t come in with a denial, you’re probably looking at a preliminary injunction.
.. If his truck driving company gets shut down because of theft of trade secrets on a record that he’s not willing to deny, too bad for him. Too bad. Listen, I’m not sympathetic to it. You represent somebody who’s in a mess. Well, they’re in a mess too.
.. THE COURT: You’ve got it all wrong. You’re trying to put the burden on me and on them. They have made a record. You are not even a party to the case. Uber is the party to the case. And on this record there is a good chance that Uber is going to get hit with a preliminary injunction come May 3rd. And if you want to deny the facts, go ahead. If you want to stand moot because of the Fifth Amendment, that’s your privilege. But you’re not going to slow this down — you’re not going to slow this down because of this kind of a situation. I’m sorry. The equity is on their side, not on your side.
.. THE COURT: No. This is — this is a nonstarter. I’m not going to get diverted off into you coming in here with — with no motion whatsoever, nothing, and trying to get special pleading because you represent somebody big, and get an under-seal hearing so the public can’t hear it. That’s not going to work.
.. If your guy is involved in criminal activity and has to have criminal lawyers of the caliber of these two gentlemen, who are the best, well, okay, they got the best. But it’s a problem that I can’t solve for you. And if you think I’m going to cut you slack because you’re looking at — your guy is looking at jail time, no.
.. If the Court grants our petition, then it means that this trade secrets issue goes into arbitration. And if he testifies there, it’s — it’s in confidence. It’s a big difference.
THE COURT: Ridiculous. It’s not in confidence. The United States Attorney can go subpoena information all day long.
.. If I cannot get a declaration from him, then, Your Honor, I’m going to do the following: We’re going to demonstrate to you that we are not using any of these things that they say he may have taken. That’s my point. And it’s a very important point. THE COURT: That would be a legitimate point
.. THE COURT: Listen, please don’t do this to me again. There’s going to be a lot of adverse headlines in this case on both sides. And I can’t stop that. And that’s — the public has a right — in fact, this whole transcript, I’m going to make it public. There’s nothing — what do you say?
.. if there’s not a clear-cut path to showing that those 14,000 documents weren’t used, then you’re looking at a preliminary injunction.
.. If you all keep insisting on redacting so much information, like — and you’re the guilty one on that, Mr. Verhoeven — then arbitration looks better and better. Because I’m not going to put up with it. If we’re going to be in a public proceeding, 99 percent of what — 90 percent, anyway, has got to be public. The stuff — this employment agreement by Google, it’s laughable that you want to keep that under wraps. Just laughable.
.. And I feel that so strongly. I am not — the U.S. District Court is not a wholly owned subsidiary of Quinn Emanuel or Morrison & Foerster or these two big companies. We belong to the public.
.. We are specifically not waiving either of those rights or privileges. And we would ask the Court, it’s simply the 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 27 question of identifying the name of a vendor who reviewed materials. This is something that can wait. THE COURT: No, it can’t wait. There is no basis for making this wait. At least on the record that I have now. And you were free for the last two weeks to bring any motion that you wanted, instead of a sandbag motion out of left field and the way you’re doing it here today. So the answer is no. Your objection is made for the record. Good. Okay.
.. THE COURT: And if you don’t — if you can’t order your guy to do what he’s required to do to meet the charges Mr. Verhoeven has leveled against him, and has proof to back it up, that sounds to me — then, to finish my thought, too bad.
.. Now, when I was practicing law, the idea that you could withhold the author of a document in a privilege log was also laughable. No such thing.
.. So maybe what you need to do is bring your own lawsuit against Uber. But I’m not giving you that relief right now. If you brought a formal motion with points and authorities that said I had to do that, of course, I would definitely consider that. But off the top of my head and the way this is being presented out of left field today, I would say you’re out of luck on that.