An Awesome Woman Successfully Stands Up to a Powerful Man

“I do not wish them [women] to have power over men, but power over themselves.” Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797)

“Patty Dunn wants to talk to you,” Barbara said, rushing up to my desk.

            Barbara Keaton had been my executive assistant for many years. She managed my law practice, talked to clients, coordinated law firm staff, and calmed nervous associates. If needed, she became our drill sergeant, watching over our trial team like a caring mother. In our firm, her trial support was legendary.

            We were at a crucial moment in defending a patent jury trial in San Jose state court with millions of dollars at stake. That evening, the whole trial team filled a large workroom in the San

Jose Fairmont Hotel. Each lawyer worked at a separate table allowing immediate discussion of any developments. The shared tension of our trial created a bond among the lawyers and staff.

Two sleep-deprived associates tapped loyally at their computer keyboards to retrieve patent law court decisions. My partner, Wes Overson, prepared his examination of an electrical engineer. I sat at my desk engrossed in preparing my cross-examination of the opposition inventor. I had found some important wiring differences between his invention and those of our client and could show our client did not violate his patent.

I did not appreciate Barbara’s interruption. However, Barbara knew when to interrupt. “Patty Dunn?” I asked.

“She’s the chairperson of Hewlett-Packard board of directors. She’s on the cover of Time Magazine. Mike Sitrick told her to call you.”

Mike is the leading publicist in the U.S. He has helped hundreds of people and corporations make sure reporters understood the client’s position. He had helped several of my clients formulate public relations defenses to combat negative national publicity.

Barbara handed me the magazine. The woman on the cover looked lost, with dark sunken eyes over gray lined cheeks. Time magazine had added black streaks around her face. The picture sent two messages: “buy this magazine” and “read about a woman in deep trouble.”

I read the article. Hewlett Packard had become the center of a national privacy scandal. Patty Dunn’s problem started with a corporate investigation to find which HP board member had leaked confidential corporate planning information to a reporter which the reporter then published. That leak by a board member exposed the company to possible criminal investigations and lawsuits charging violations of insider trading statutes: a felony. An investor is forbidden from receiving secret corporate information that other investors do not have and then trading the stock. The HP Board had a legal obligation to discover the leaker. During the investigation, HP staff and outside investigators examined board members’ personal telephone records, which the press declared an invasion of privacy. Hewlett Packard investigators also obtained records from the telephone company by impersonating the owners of those lines, a practice so common that it had a name: “Pretexting.” The investigators searched for calls between a board member and the reporter who wrote the story. They successfully traced the calls. Patricia Dunn gave the board of directors the identity of the board member who leaked the companies’ confidential information to the reporter.

Hewlett Packard’s amazing growth

HP’s early successes were legendary. The company, founded in 1938 by William “Bill” Hewlett, a graduate of Stanford and MIT, and Dave Packard, a Stanford graduate, where he played football and basketball, made a one-car garage their lab and office in an area 30 miles south of San Francisco. At that time, San Franciscans knew the area as “The Farm.” Later the world came to know it as Silicon Valley. Hewlett Packard produced an audio oscillator, an important part in calculators and, later, in computers. By the time Patty Dunn became the chairperson of the board, 65 years later, HP was the world’s leading producer of personal computers. The company ranked ninth on the Fortune 500 list of the largest corporations, with combined revenues of over $100 billion.

I meet the client that night.

Trial lawyers understand that new cases come like babies—when they are ready. Wes and I planned to start another trial as soon as our San Jose patent trial finished. By any reasonable logic, I should have turned down the Patty Dunn case. Instead, I began to represent her that night. I drove the 48 miles up Route 101 to San Francisco’s Nob Hill and sat in Patty’s condominium with Patty and her husband, Bill Jahnke. Located on an upper floor, the condominium offered a stunning view of the lighted Golden Gate Bridge and Marin County to the north. The multicolored blinking lights of North Beach below made me wonder what fun San Franciscans might be enjoying in the North Beach Café or other bistros while the three of us discussed a corporate and personal disaster.

Framed by short dark hair, Patty’s brown eyes met my gaze directly, and at medium height, she had a presence both commanding and warm. She radiated intelligence and a curiosity shaped by years of studying the underlying cause of difficult business problems. As she told me what she faced, her calm demeanor showed she could walk into the winds of a hurricane and keep her balance. Her measured voice gave no hint of the national disgrace that enveloped her.

Bill, imposing but agreeable, spoke precisely. His years as a successful banker showed in his careful manner of describing the out-of-control mess. Clearly, Bill was Patty’s loyal supporter, lieutenant, and her rock.

They explained what had happened during the board’s leak investigation.

The leak from an anonymous board member first surfaced in 2006 when CNET, an online technology site, published a piece about long-term corporate strategy at HP. The source’s name did not appear in the story. The leak could only have come from a board member.

This was a serious breach of trust. The leaking board member owed a duty of confidentiality to the corporation. Leaked information can unlawfully affect the stock price. The law requires that material news from a company listed on the stock exchange can only be released publicly, not leaked privately to one person. Law requires that all buyers and sellers get corporate information at the same time so they can make informed decisions to buy or sell.

Therefore, the investigation, authorized by the HP Board, including the examination of board members’ private phone records.

Ironically, HP’s technology had sped up the flow of private personal information around the world. Old privacy walls crumbled. Patty’s case presented a question haunting the nation.

What personal information is private? What is not?

The board leaker had been a federal official in Washington, D.C., where press leaks were part of the political game. The leaker confessed to the board. The board asked him to leave the boardroom while they discussed what to do. That discussion led to a divided vote to ask the leaker to resign. One board member, Tom Perkins, historically one of the most powerful venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, became visibly agitated, demanding another vote. Yet, central to our story, he did not complain about any privacy issues used by the investigators.

With degrees from MIT and Harvard, Tom Perkins had a storied Silicon Valley career. He became the man to see to finance startup companies. He had the gravitas to match his central position in the burgeoning world of computers. When computers still took up entire rooms, Perkins became head of HP’s small research department. Later he founded Kleiner Perkins, which became a powerful venture capital firm. He had served on the boards of many international corporations. At one time, he was the “man” in Silicon Valley. Now, at 74, he still held financial cachet in some quarters. Although some of his corporate luster had diminished, his ego remained intact.

I have represented many powerful men and women who were wise enough to mature gracefully. Perkins thought he still possessed the full-throttle power of his forties. While he may have lacked some of his former power to build corporations, he believed he still had the power to destroy Patty Dunn’s impeccable reputation.

The ousted board leaker happened to be a close supporter of Tom Perkins on the HP board. Like Tom, the leaker formed part of the Hewlett Packard Corporation’s old guard. Perkins might lose support on the board if they expelled the leaker.

Perkins stood up melodramatically, closed his computer, and stormed out of the boardroom. He must have thought the board would panic at losing him. However, the board simply began to work on the next agenda item. No one tried to stop Perkins from leaving. The entire board let him leave, not just Patty Dunn.

The gender symbolism was not lost on me as Patty carefully relayed the story. This battle pitted an aging male corporate titan against an admired younger female leader.

The national drama included the reporter and his telephone records. It seemed an ironic twist—a reporter complaining about a privacy incursion. Having defended reporters in trial, I knew that, on the trail of a good story, they often disregard the target’s privacy. In this case, the identity of the reporter was not a secret. His name appeared on his stories’ byline. Nevertheless, other members of the press expressed outraged. They lit a fire under a national privacy debate with Patty Dunn in the center of the flames.

That first night we met, Patty’s loyalty to Hewlett Packard was obvious. She had agreed to hold a press conference, at CEO Mark Hurd’s request, to explain the company’s investigation. At the press conference, she faced an army of TV cameras and explained that there had been a leak and that the corporation had to find the leaker. That act of corporate loyalty cost her dearly. That press conference led to her picture on the cover of Time magazine. She became a national symbol of privacy violations.

I wondered where Chief Executive Officer Hurd’s loyalties lay in this fiasco. As chief executive, he had command over all the employees. Patty told me Hurd supported her. She hoped that his unflinching support would help her stay on the board, at least for a discreet period so she could make a graceful exit.

A few days after leaving the board, Perkins changed his mind about why he left. He decided it was not because Patty Dunn had told the board the leaker’s name. Instead, he claimed he objected to the company’s investigation invading people’s privacy. He decided to become outraged. When a powerful person speaks, people listen. Perkins wore the victim’s cloak, despite the truth.

Tom Perkins vowed to get revenge for Patty releasing the name of the leaker to the board. He planned a shootout at the Hewlett Packard corral and hired big guns.

He mobilized his anti-Dunn campaign by hiring Viet Dinh, a former U.S. Department of Justice Assistant U.S. Attorney General. Perkins also retained Hill & Knowlton, a leading public relations firm, which took the privacy story to the press, accusing Patty of engineering a massive invasion of the reporter’s and board members’ privacy. They attacked Patty, charging that she snooped into a journalist’s private phone records. The press exploded, firing defamatory shrapnel at Patty and Hewlett Packard for days.

Perkins complained about Patty to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The press described it as a spying scandal. Perkins gained national prominence as the great defender of privacy.

The press wrote about evidence that outside investigators may have crossed the privacy line as they tried to find the leaker. I believed that criminal law did not cover this kind of situation or implicate Patty Dunn.

With the corporation wallowing in daily negative coverage, some board members turned their guns on their former friend Patty Dunn. Others stayed loyal to her. Some new clients start with the Why Me? Syndrome. The sullying of her hard-earned reputation, her promotions, her achievements, and her standing in the business community deeply hurt Patty. However, throughout the time I represented her she kept all that hurt to herself.

Years of successful corporate management had produced a brilliant, balanced business leader. Patty represented the fulfillment of a historic longing for gender equality. I found it hard to fathom how a person with Patty’s history did what the press and the state criminal authorities claimed. Patty’s claim of no criminal knowledge or intent rang true to me.

Patty’s husband, Bill, successful in the corporate banking world himself, kept interjecting. He wanted to be sure that I understood the outstanding personal qualities of the love of his life. Born to modest surroundings, Patricia Dunn lost her father when she was 11. Her mother raised Patty and her sister as a single parent. Patty entered the University of Oregon, but dropped out to support herself, her mother, and her sister. She took menial jobs. Then she entered the University of California at Berkeley, graduating with a B.A. in journalism. After graduation, she took a job as a temporary assistant at Wells Fargo bank. Her boss saw her potential and promoted her to an administrative job. At Wells Fargo Patty quickly moved up the ranks of the male-dominated banking world, becoming a pioneer in the development of a new banking industry program. She realized early that banks could manage customer’s investments. That new banking initiative grew under Patty’s leadership.

Barclays Global Investors, the largest corporate money investment manager in the world, acquired the asset-management division of Wells Fargo Bank. Barclays managed $2 trillion dollars of customer accounts. Leaders of Wells Fargo and Barclays met and named Patty Dunn the chief executive officer (CEO) of Barclays. By then she had gained a deep understanding of investment management.

It is important to understand that at the heart of Barclay’s business was the trust clients placed in the people who held, managed, and invested their money. Patty Dunn had built a solid reputation. Investors, her peers, and that part of the public who knew of her achievements trusted her.

Later, the Hewlett Packard board asked Patty to become a member. A local group named her Financial Woman of the Year. When she replaced the outgoing chair of the HP board, there was one important difference from her predecessor. Patty was the “nonexecutive” chair. Her limited role at HP was just what it sounded like. She had no administrative responsibilities. No control over employees. No control over the H.P. security department. No ability to direct any employee’s work. She simply presided over board meetings and worked with board members.

Watching my dad’s quiet success as an Irish American at Symphony Hall in Boston, becoming one of the business managers in a society-controlled organization, gave me insight into Patty’s impressive opening of the “men only” top management doors. On her road to the top she had overcome many potholes.

At Hewlett Packard, Mark Hurd held the position of Chief Executive Officer, in charge of running the company, including the legal and security department investigating the leaker. That first evening we spoke Patty believed Hurd supported her but Bill seemed less convinced. The CEO could easily be caught up in the scandal and lose his multimillion-dollar job. Bill and I wondered whether he would save himself at Patty’s expense.

Fueled by national publicity, William Lockyer, the California Attorney General, had opened a criminal investigation. I knew that Patty would fight criminal charges with everything she had.

During the entire crisis period, Patty had a serious medical problem, Stage IV ovarian cancer. Chemotherapy had caused a period of remission but as the national scandal enveloped Patty, her deadly illness returned. I researched ovarian cancer. Stage IV means cancer cells have spread. Long days of a criminal trial would be physically and mentally demanding. As I drove back to the San Jose Fairmont hotel late that first night, I wondered where a court would establish the new border between the personal privacy of a reporter who published confidential corporate information on the one hand and a legally required corporate investigation on the other.

Privacy law is fluid and contextual. For example, telephone numbers, which were at the heart of this scandal, became readily accessible. In our case, the investigators had gone a step further and examined whom the board member had called. The board leaker had forfeited his privacy when he illegally disclosed corporate information, contrary to law. That left the reporter as the only potential “victim.” He had obtained and published HP information to which he knew he was not entitled. His superiors would claim its First Amendment right to publish, but that still left the reporter as an unappealing victim subject to cross-examination about publishing corporate information.

Criminal decisions in the United States Supreme Court had addressed privacy. The Rehnquist Court held that to complain about police seizing things a defendant had to have a “reasonable expectation of privacy.” Using that new standard, the criminal courts chipped away at everyone’s privacy rights. It seemed reasonable to think a person’s call records at the telephone company were private. They were frequently made available to criminal investigators without a warrant. I wondered what the reporter’s telephone contract states about keeping his telephone records private. I would check that fact.

Surveys of public opinion showed younger people expect less privacy. Mass communication of personal facts created a society trying to determine where legal privacy boundaries lay.

I had to set priorities. Patty remained on the board. Was it possible the board would let Patty leave gracefully at a future time? Patty needed Hurd’s support for a dignified exit. That way she could begin to emerge from the dark corporate cloud that enveloped her.

Patty set up a meeting with Hurd. As we walked into HP headquarters, we encountered a scene I had seen many times in other cases. People who work with the disgraced do not know how to act or what to say. It can be the equivalent of an unexpected death in a friend’s family. Some turn away, while others show their support. As I tell indicted clients, some former friends disappear and others will bring you chicken soup. Those soup people will be friends for life.

Some employees avoided looking at Patty. Others made a point of coming over to greet the woman who still served as chair of the board.

A secretary ushered us into Hurd’s office. Hurd’s agreeably boyish face shone like a round polished stone at the bottom of a Sierra stream. I got the feeling that powerful waters could wash over him and he would survive. I suspected that the central fact saving him from the board’s retribution for the privacy scandal was that he had increased HP’s corporate income during his tenure. His glasses, perched on his nose, seemed to say, I read a lot. His voice had a reassuring, mellow quality. I wanted to discover whether he would remain loyal to Patty Dunn, who had gotten him the biggest job of his life. She had been part of a three-person committee that found Hurd and proposed him to be Chief Executive Officer of HP.

His office was modestly furnished. A few adequate modern chairs near the door clearly said, “Do not stay longer than you need to.”

Patty and I sat down and began a cordial discussion. Then I brought up a tactically unwise truth. That week, HP gave Perkins a large amount of money, some sort of “settlement” of his alleged “grievances.” Because Perkins was a key witness in a possible criminal case, I suggested that the transfer of money to Perkins at that time might look like a payoff.

Hurd grew visibly flustered. He stood up and walked into the hall leaving us in his office. I realized he had been the source of the money to Perkins. Hurd supported Perkins, not Patty, saving himself at all costs.

Over the ensuing months, I repeatedly told Patty my opinion that Hurd did not support her. She refused to let go of her hope that he remained loyal. I said, “He is not loyal to you” so often that, instead of repeating my warning, we developed a shorthand where I just said, “Number 27,” like a football quarterback. I called that audible many times.

The board met a few days after the Hurd meeting. Patty and I waited in an anteroom. Successive drafts of a settlement went back and forth. Could Patty resign? No. Could leaving be effective at a future time? No. The board expelled Patty Dunn, hoping the purge would calm the roiling public waters. In corporate speak they threw her, “under the bus.” The board saved Hurd and made him chair of the board. Most corporations make decisions on a principled business basis. Here, I thought some of the board members were in total panic.

The public discussion about privacy, Patty Dunn, and Hewlett Packard, was just beginning. The outside HP investigators had arranged for pretexting, which involved calling the telephone company, pretending to be the customer, and asking for a copy of the telephone records. The imposter then received a copy of the customer’s telephone records. That ploy was a common ruse of suspicious spouses and private investigators.

Should pretexting be a crime? Legal experts descended on the question like many pigeons pecking one large seed. “Yes, no, maybe.” There was no consensus, except that pretexting was “controversial.” The press decided to use Hewlett Packard as a privacy test case to clarify the complex world of privacy. The criminal investigation came to rest in the office of the California state attorney general William Lockyer.

I met with Bill Lockyer to discuss whether there would be an indictment. He sat coolly with two of his deputies in their elegant, wood-paneled Sacramento office. Lockyer had started as an Alameda County School District member and became a state assembly member. Twenty- five years in the state legislature had given him the reputation as a reasonable supporter of the environment, diversity, and other progressive causes. We had been greeting each other at political and bar meetings for many years, but now I looked across the ornate, deeply burnished table at his stern face. I recognized that look, the stare of a prosecutor intending to indict.

I made my presentation.

“The law does not support a criminal case.” I cited cases. “Patty Dunn had no information warning her that pretexting was being used, much less that it was illegal.” I presented strong evidence that Patty had not known about the pretexting or how the investigators got the telephone records of third parties.

“Legal experts disagree about the limits of privacy. You will not get past a motion to dismiss,” I said, hoping my voice carried conviction.

“She has terminal ovarian cancer, Stage IV. She may not make it through a criminal trial.”

“Her medical condition is not relevant.” Lockyer said, sitting stiffly his hands folded on the table. His assistants gave me a cold stare. No empathy in that room.

Because of the immense national publicity behind the case, my job that day seemed like looking at a 10-foot wave and telling it not to crash on the sand.

I left the room discouraged. I knew there would be criminal charges. I did not know that one of Perkins’ partners had already talked to Lockyer about the matter. I later discovered Lockyer had assured Perkin’s partner there would be no criminal case against Hurd. Patty Dunn was to bear total responsibility for the corporation’s mistakes. The only question, when would Lockyer file criminal charges?

Mike Sitrick, our public relations expert, thought Patty should go on 60 Minutes, the CBS Sunday night national news show for an interview with Lesley Stahl. He told me, “Fire must be fought with fire.” Currently buried under negative publicity, Mike thought Patty had the poise and smarts to make a good impression on the show’s 14 million viewers.

Much as I admired Patty, I knew it was a very dangerous step. We would risk everything. At trial, the prosecutors would use whatever Patty said on TV against her.

I researched Stahl, looking at some of her earlier pieces. Lesley Stahl is one of the best senior reporters in the U.S. She would go after Patty, certainly, but I knew Patty was up to the challenge. Patty would present an appealing contrast to Perkins, the aging male corporate avenger. Sitrick approached Stahl. We had decided to go to the basketball hoop despite a seven- foot, 280-pound publicity behemoth guarding the rim. Patty would go right at Perkins on national television. There is a great truth in lawyering; bullies cannot stand to be confronted.

Patty was indicted on October 4, 2006. My partner Raj Chatterjee took her to be booked in the Santa Clara courthouse. She was charged with four felony counts: use of a wire, because the investigators had made calls to the telephone company to get the records; taking, copying, and using computer data without authorization; identity theft; and that old prosecutor’s favorite, conspiracy.

Perkins publicly celebrated the indictment as a vindication of himself. My Irish was up. I answered him in a press conference:

“Tom Perkins attacked my client. He did so unfairly. He did so falsely when he knows she cannot answer him. He is rewriting the history of what happened. I am not going to sit here and let him get away with it. It’s awful what he did.”

With an indictment pending, we again mulled the question whether Patty should go on 60 Minutes. I told her, “Patty, every lawyer you meet from now on will tell you going on television when an indictment is pending is madness. It violates every line in the trial lawyer’s playbook. However, some days the playbook must be thrown out the window. I think you should do this.”

There is no trial lawyer’s playbook. There are only situations in which lawyers give their best advice.

So on a Sunday night in October of 2006, 14 million people watched Patty Dunn fight back.

Stahl began, “Let me ask you the obvious question that I think every lawyer who’s watching is asking himself or herself: Why are you giving us an interview right after you were indicted? It’s pretty unusual.”

Patty laughed and replied, “So my lawyer tells me. I am innocent. I need people to understand what happened.” She was off to the races. She continued, explaining why the board had to investigate. “The idea that the most sensitive discussions of the board would end up on the front page of the Wall Street Journal was destructive. It destroyed trust among board members and if they do not trust each other, they cannot function. The board voted for an investigation.”

Stahl said, “The [criminal] complaint specifically mentions that you gave the investigators the home phone numbers of your fellow board members.”

Patty remained calm as she said, “I don’t remember giving the investigators the home phone numbers of my fellow board members, but those are not hard to get within HP. They’re public information within the board infrastructure.”

Patty told the viewers how she had consulted with the HP in- house lawyers during the leak investigation. Her reliance on advice of sophisticated lawyers made sense, and totally undercut the claim that she knowingly broke the law. Patty explained that board members voluntarily give up privacy when they join a public board. “People who sit on public company boards have a very different attitude about this than the general public. First, you give up a lot of privacy when you go onto a board. You have to make all kinds of declarations. Your life is a much more of an open book when you have this kind of public trust.”

There it was—the heart of the matter. What was the scope of board members’ privacy?

Judges have authored hundreds of legal decisions dealing with the expectation of privacy in a person’s house, out on the lawn, in the contents of a garbage can on the sidewalk, at the mall, in an airplane, or in a handbag. Does a board member have a reasonable expectation of privacy, given his or her job in a public corporation? The board was entitled to find the connection between the leaker and the reporter. They had to find out which member of the board had broken their fiduciary duty to the corporation.

Finally, Patty told the truth about Tom Perkins. She explained to Stahl that Perkins wanted to keep the identity of the leaker from the board. “Well, they were best friends. They were allies on the board. In addition, I think he thought it was a possibility that the board would say the leaker should resign. He just did not want that outcome. What Tom believed was that we would simply tell the leaker never to do it again. Then we would inform the board that we had identified the leaker that he had confessed and agreed he would never do it again.”

Patty described that when she shared the identity of the leaker with the board Perkins exploded and resigned from the board. One of the board members confirmed with the general counsel that they could accept that resignation, and the board did so. Perkins was out. Patty concluded, “He then started a disinformation campaign against me.”

We felt satisfied with Patty’s performance, but, like playwrights waiting for the first reviews on a Broadway opening night, we waited to learn what viewers thought.

The press told us quickly. Many viewers sided with Patty. She received many supportive notes. We had been right in thinking that Tom Perkins was a perfect foil. He would also be a key witness at the trial. He would be under oath. No public relations man could save him before a jury. What really happened at the board meeting would be public for all to see.

The big feedback from Patty’s 60 Minutes performance came in San Francisco’s Saint Francis Hotel a few weeks later. Five hundred celebrities, politicians, and luminaries gathered to see Patty receive the local business association Business Woman of the Year award. She had told the group she should not accept the award because of the scandal. They insisted. When the emcee called Patty up front to accept the award, she received a standing ovation. She made a dignified acceptance. San Francisco supports their own.

A congressional house Committee subpoenas Patty

In Washington, D.C., we entered the House hearing room, which seemed the size of a large basketball auditorium. Staff scurried in and out, looking serious and self-important. Members of Congress produced impressive scowls like disapproving parents.

The mood in the room? Bloodthirsty. The vibe? We know you did it. We know you are terrible people.

I thought this was what the French Revolution must have been like. No hope for the accused; no clear understanding by the accusing mob.

During the questioning, Patty’s answers clearly favored privacy, although no one discussed in any detail the existing law, much less clear proposals for reform. However, there was some discussion of outlawing pretexting. We liked that discussion. It was an admission. The practice was not a federal crime.

The general counsel of Hewlett Packard took the Fifth Amendment. Patty answered all the questions. Representative Greg Walden of Oregon grilled Patty relentlessly about whether phone records were generally available. Half the committee members seemed confused.

We went home to California to concentrate on the upcoming state criminal trial.

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All sides in the criminal case had attended several meetings with Judge Ray Cunningham in the Santa Clara Superior Courthouse. He seemed to have a favorable view of our case, including a sense that privacy law was fluid and unsettled. Criminal court judges regularly try to settle criminal cases by suggesting to the participants what a proper resolution might be. He shared his thoughts with the attorneys.

I told him we needed a dismissal or we would go to trial. I explained the lack of clarity in privacy law. He shared his nonbinding recommendations for resolution of the case and indicated he had some questions about the case against Dunn.

Then we got a break. Jerry Brown replaced Bill Lockyer as attorney general of California. I renewed my detailed presentation to attorneys in the attorney general’s office. At least the deputies listened. They did not glare at me.

We negotiated for several weeks. The new AG’s deputies seemed to grasp the weaknesses in their case. They finally decided to allow a dismissal. Other defendants agreed to plead to misdemeanors.

All the lawyers met again in Judge Cunningham’s chambers. Toward the end of the meeting, Judge Cunningham said quietly, “The charges against Ms. Dunn are dismissed.”

The deputy attorney general said nothing. We walked out of the courthouse to an assembly of TV cameras and print reporters. I said what was true, “Patty Dunn got caught up in shifting legal rules relating to privacy.”

On the phone, I told Patty, “It’s over.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I’m sorry I didn’t get to see you cross-examine Tom.” Patty had one big problem removed from her life.

Patty’s case had required balancing of corporate responsibility against privacy interests. From the first day of the scandal, she publicly called for new privacy laws with clear legal lines. Patty Dunn never intended to break the law. That should count for something. In the end it did.

Patty went home to Orinda and lived as active a life as she could. She battled her cancer with the same graceful determination she had fought the scandal. She died on December 4, 2011.

Her obituaries regurgitated the old scandal. When someone damages the reputation of another, as Tom Perkins did to Patty, it is like ripping open a feather pillow on top of a windy hill. Patty Dunn’s reputation was out there on the wind. The scandal followed Patty into the next life.

Tom Perkins passed away in June 2016.

A year after the board fired Patty, in 2007, Mark Hurd appeared on the Fortune list of the 25 Most Powerful People in Business. Three years later, the Hewlett Packard board fired Hurd for misleading them in another matter. The important complex battle over privacy law continues to this day.

In the next chapter, I fight the U.S. Government after they indict a 60-year-old widow living in Nogales, Mexico on the U.S. border.