Legal Dispute Over Google Plane – and Its Sofas – Escalates

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Lawyers for the founders of Google, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, contend that the executives’ lives could be in danger because of disclosures about a Boeing 767 jet they purchased. But when the luxurious private plane was being designed the pair seemed more obsessed with the sofas.A legal dispute over the wide-body aircraft escalated further yesterday as a California judge ordered contempt of court proceedings against an Oklahoma aircraft designer, Leslie Jennings, who was hired to transform the former Qantas jet into an oasis for the Google billionaires.The Delaware company Messrs. Brin and Page used to purchase the plane, Blue City Holdings LLC, sought the contempt order against Mr. Jennings after he was quoted in the Wall Street Journal on Friday detailing the Google founders’ requests for onboard hammocks and a large bed known as a California king to outfit what the designer said a Google executive described as a “party airplane.”In a deposition earlier this year, Mr. Jennings said he met the Google founders twice, and on both occasions they were eager to discuss bedding-related logistics. “They were wanting to know if you could move a sofa across the room during flight,” the designer said. “Could they sleep in the bed and take off and land while in the bed.”For a September 2005 meeting at Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., “a full-size sofa mockup” was delivered so Messrs. Brin and Page “could sit on it, lay on it, then have comments about it,” Mr. Jennings said.Mr. Jennings said he and several others working on the plane spent an entire day at the Googleplex, as it is called, but that he had difficulty keeping the attention of the Google duo. “We had meetings that would last a minute, two minutes, 10 minutes, five minutes. They were just in and out and tried to give us their input on what they thought of the sofa,” Mr. Jennings said. “They were just very busy.”Asked in the deposition if any matters other than the sofa were discussed that day, the designer replied, “No.”Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, also was identified in court papers as being one of the three principal users of the aircraft, which can transport about 255 people in an all-economy, airline configuration.Mr. Jennings placed a lien on the plane and sued Blue City in Texas after the company fired him in October without paying all the money he says he was owed for his work on the plane. Blue City countered with a suit in California, alleging he failed to complete the job and accusing him of breaching a confidentiality agreement he signed.In court papers seeking to bar Mr. Jennings from speaking with the press about the project, attorneys for Blue City argued that the Google executives could be endangered by disclosures about the plane’s layout and furnishings.”Personal security of the intended passengers of the aircraft is a paramount concern because of the high profile of their business and wealth,” a former Secret Service agent, Eric Powell, wrote in a declaration filed earlier this year. “The design details and location of sleeping cabins, seating areas, conference rooms, communication equipment, and similar items must be protected … Floor plans, diagrams, and construction details are precisely the kinds of information that hostile individuals intending to do harm to the aircraft or its occupants would seek out. With such information in their hands, assailants would have knowledge of the aircraft’s layout, where particular occupants are likely to be found, and how to be most effective in a violent attack or hostage-taking situation.”Mr. Powell also said “industrial espionage” could be facilitated by disclosure of the designs. “Concerns about these matters are not theoretical,” the security expert warned.While Messrs. Brin, Page, and Schmidt are mentioned by name in some court papers, their names are sometimes deleted. Some references omit Google entirely, describing it only as “a high-profile public company.”Mr. Powell’s declaration details his experience in the Air Force, the Secret Service, and the Customs Service, but does not mention his subsequent employment or any connection to Google.However, a Web site for a San Francisco-based Israeli martial arts school where Mr. Powell teaches describes his current profession as “executive protection detail leader for Fortune 100 company.”Reached yesterday through the Google switchboard, a man by the name of Eric Powell declined to answer a reporter’s questions about whether the company knows of specific threats to its leaders.Judge Joseph Huber entered the so-called show cause order against Mr. Jennings after a 15-minute hearing yesterday morning in the judge’s chambers at Santa Clara County Superior Court. A lawyer for Blue City, Eric Schwarz, and an attorney for Mr. Jennings, Bruce Cleeland, were present, but a bailiff denied three journalists access to the session.Mr. Cleeland said the judge set an August 7 hearing on the show cause order, but did not give any instructions to Mr. Jennings in the meantime.A Google spokesman, Jonathan Murchinson, said the company was not involved with the aircraft and he referred questions about the court dispute to Mr. Schwarz. He confirmed the judge’s order, but otherwise declined to be interviewed for this story.It was not immediately clear why the hearing was conducted in secret. Mr. Jennings’s deposition was labeled as “highly confidential” on each page, and a letter Mr. Schwarz sent requesting yesterday’s hearing was marked “Confidential – To Be Filed Under Seal.” However, those and other filings in the case were made public by the court.Mr. Jennings did not return a call and e-mail message yesterday seeking comment for this article. However, according to a court filing, an attorney for Blue City received a bitter and somewhat cryptic e-mail from Mr. Jennings over the weekend explaining his decision to speak out about the legal imbroglio.“I yelled for help until I was blue in the face! I sent e-mail, I called. What I feared, what I wanted to talk about … happened! I spent every penny I had trying to be heard, thinking that the truth would get to the client,” Mr. Jennings wrote.“I spent my life working in a business that I loved, in 40 years, not one client was disappointed in my work. I could not let my family see me not stand up for myself. Your law firm, in its effort to take as much money from the client as it possibly can, will never let me have MY DAY in court. I don’t have an abundance of days left so, … I will not sit quietly by and not get to tell my story.”

Legal Dispute Over Google Plane – and Its Sofas – Escalates

Legal Dispute Over Google Plane – and Its Sofas – Escalates

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