Follow all the coverage of Hewlett-Packard’s boardroom spying scandal � and the continuing legal fallout.
Of course, these aren’t the first questions about independence to come up in the case.
Morgan, Lewis came in at a time when the board’s normal outside counsel, Larry Sonsini of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, was under immense press scrutiny for what he knew about the leak probe.
Sonsini had been the one to communicate with former HP director Thomas Perkins � whose resignation spurred the leak probe crisis � in the days before it blew up. And e-mails between Sonsini and Perkins that made it into several press outlets showed that Sonsini had some knowledge of the investigation, though it’s not clear he knew what tactics were involved.
Over the last few weeks, Sonsini, along with other partners at his firm, seem to have taken a diminished role in the HP matter. While at least one lawyer at the firm went with Morgan, Lewis lawyers to meet with federal prosecutors on Sept. 11, the company said in recent days that Morgan, Lewis attorneys would be in charge of dealing with the government.
The Hewlett-Packard mess began last year when Dunn � whose lawyer, James Brosnahan, didn’t return calls by press time Friday � ordered an investigation to identify the source of leaks about board deliberations.
That initial investigation turned up nothing, Hurd and Holston said Friday. But, they added, a subsequent probe conducted last year identified a leaker responsible for providing information used in a Jan. 23 CNet story on the company’s overall direction.
While it’s been reported in several news outlets that the leaker was former board member George Keyworth � who stepped down last week � the CNet story does not appear to contain any company information that had not already been made public.
After the second investigation was announced to the board this past spring, an outraged Perkins quit in protest.
The disclosure of the investigation followed Perkins’ resignation. Though Perkins resigned on May 18, it was not until Sept. 6 that the company gave details � as required by law � about the director’s action. In that filing, the company said it had received a comment letter from the SEC asking for more information about Perkins’ resignation.
Perkins’ lawyer, Viet Dinh, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, has said his client engaged in a 3 1/2-month effort to get Hewlett-Packard to come clean about why Perkins quit.
Perkins abruptly quit during an HP board meeting after Keyworth was asked to resign. (Keyworth at first refused to resign, but then agreed to step down as part of a settlement with the company.)
Investigators apparently used legally suspect means � including impersonating the targets of their probe � to access the phone records of board members, HP employees, journalists and Sonsini.
A Boston investigative firm has been cited as the one responsible for hiring people to lie in calls to phone company officials to gain access to the phone records of board members. Boston investigative firm Security Outsourcing Solutions reportedly provided HP with an opinion from a Boston lawyer that the “pretexting” was legal.
The legality of such tactics is up for consideration by the San Francisco U.S. attorney’s office and the California attorney general. They’re both investigating the issue, and Attorney General Bill Lockyer has said he has enough evidence to indict people inside and outside HP, and has met with HP representatives more than once since the scandal broke.
