Attorneys for the Louisiana Technology Council have issued subpoenas for Mayor Ray Nagin, city attorney Penya Moses-Fields and interim technology director Harrison Boyd,to appear in court Tuesday for a hearing on the dispute between the city and LTC over Nagin's deleted e-mails.
The city filed a civil lawsuit against thetechnology grouponMonday, claimingLTChad breached a confidentiality agreement.The firm was hired to perform a forensic audit to locate Nagin's missing e-mails, inresponse tolawsuit filed by WWL-TVand reporter Lee Zurik, following a public records request.
The city lawsuit against the LTC asked for a temporary restraining order and permanent injunction. A hearing on the request for aninjunctionis set for Tuesday inOrleans Civil District Court. Judge Paulette Irons denied the city's request for a temporary restraining order last Tuesday.
Michael Arata, who along with attorney Rob Couhig is representing LTC, confirmed to Eyewitness News that the subpoenas had been issued to Nagin and top city officials.
"The only reason we issued these subpoenas was because we couldn't make heads or tails of the case," Arata said Friday. "We hope that the mayor and/or city attorney, since they filed this suit, would be able to explain to the court what we consider needless and baseless litigation."
The LTC was fired July 17 for violating the city's confidentiality agreement, after Mark Lewis and Christopher Reade went public on July 1 with their findings by holding a press conference, officials from city contend.
The LTC denies the claim that they violated the agreement.
"The City of New Orleans has sought an injunction against the Louisiana Technology Council for one simple reason -- it has no assurance that LTC returned a complete copy of the City's confidential data and destroyed all other copies of data created by LTC or its subcontractors. It also cannot confirm whether this confidential data was shared with any third parties," said City Attorney Penya Moses-Fields in a statement.
"We have no data," said Lewis. "We gave all of that data back to them when we had a meeting with them early last week."
Reade said at the press conference that mayor's e-mails had been deleted intentionally by someone who had access to the server and had a high level of computer knowledge and technical expertise.
"LTC signed a nondisclosure agreement that prohibited it from disclosing any information about its work. Mr. Lewis and his subcontractor, Mr. Reade, violated that agreement when they chose to discuss the preliminary findings of their forensic audit -- an audit they now admit was flawed," said Moses-Fields' statement.
The city is fighting to stop any further public disclosure of information related to LTC's forensic audit. The city claims in the lawsuit that a representative from Digital Forensics named "Andrew" said that a copy of the data was retained by the company and additional copy was given to a federal agent in response to a subpoena. LTC officials do notdispute that material was given tofederal authorities.
"We steadfastly maintain we have not provided the data to anybody," Lewis said, "other than subpoena that we were requested and forced to provide the data." The subpoena came from the U.S. Attorney's Office, Lewis said.
The city is asking insure that LTC and its defendants have deleted and destroyed any copies of the electronic documents. In the lawsuit, the city alleges that there is a threat LTC may have kept copies of the city's information.
Lewis said that the LTC had agreed to cooperate with the city, and was taken aback by the lawsuit. "In fact, when we had a meeting with the city last week, we thought everything was amicable and was over and we provided exactly what they wanted; we thought this was done."
"The City has tried to resolve this dispute amicably, and I personally met with officials from LTC and its subcontractors last week. However, LTC and its subcontractors refuse to make a promise in writing, or before the Court. It seems they are more interested in garnering headlines than in fulfilling their obligations to the City of New Orleans," said Moses-Fields.
During the forensic search, Lewis said, the LTC was able to recover about 18,000 items from the server, but that the LTC did not look at the content.
