a neo-Gothic tower in the Financial District that was once San
Francisco’s tallest building. After conferring with the two lawyers,
Tyler decided not to sign the document. They agreed to communicate
that message to Theranos on his behalf, but they would eventually
need to refer him to another attorney to avoid a conflict of interest.
Their firm, Farella Braun + Martel, also represented Holmes’s estate.
When Anders informed Mike Brille that Tyler would not be signing
the affidavit, Brille warned that Theranos would have no choice but to
sue him. Tyler went home expecting to be summoned to court the next
day, but late that evening, Brille sent Anders an email saying Theranos
had decided to hold off on a lawsuit to give the two sides more time to
work something out. Tyler breathed a sigh of relief when he got the
news.
—
ANDERS REFERRED TYLER to a lawyer named Stephen Taylor, who
headed a boutique law firm in San Francisco experienced in handling
complex business disputes. During the following weeks, Brille and
Taylor exchanged four different drafts of the affidavit.
Tyler tried to be conciliatory in an effort to reach an agreement,
acknowledging in the new versions of the document that he had talked
to the Journal. Theranos gave him the option of saying that he was
young and naïve and that the reporter had deceived him, but he
declined. He had known exactly what he was doing and youth had
nothing to do with it. He hoped he would have acted the exact same
way if he had been forty or fifty. To placate Theranos, Tyler did
consent to being portrayed as a junior employee whose duties were so
menial that he couldn’t possibly have known what he was talking
about when it came to topics like proficiency testing, assay validation,
and lab operations.
But the negotiations stalled over two issues. Theranos still wanted
Tyler to name the Journal’s other sources, which Tyler steadfastly
refused to do. And the company declined to include his parents and
heirs in the litigation release it was willing to grant him. As the