documents] does not mean the firm did not maintain confidentiality,”
the judge wrote.
Yet Boies was still in business: while dismissing the claims against
John, the judge in the California case had allowed many of the claims
against Richard and Joe Fuisz to stand and the case to proceed to trial.
John might no longer be a defendant, but Boies could still use the
same narrative of collusion between father and son to argue his case
against Richard and Joe.
As the litigation dragged on into the fall, John’s initial annoyance
with the case morphed into full-blown fury at Elizabeth. After leaving
McDermott, he had founded his own practice and the Theranos case
and its allegations had cost him several clients. Opposing counsel had
also brought them up to tar him in two of his cases. By the time Boies
Schiller attorneys deposed John in the spring of 2013, his anger was
made rawer by another source of stress: his wife, Amanda, had been
diagnosed with a vasa previa, a complication of pregnancy in which
the fetus’s blood vessels are exposed and at risk of rupture. She and
John were in anxious limbo until the baby reached thirty-four weeks
and doctors could deliver her and place her in the neonatal intensive
care unit.
Even in the best of times, John had a short fuse. Growing up, he
often got into fights with other boys. Under the questioning of one of
Boies’s partners that day, he became combative and ornery, using foul
language and letting his temper flare. At the end of the six-and-a-half-
hour deposition, he made a threat that played right into Boies’s hands.
Asked by one of his father’s lawyers whether the case had caused him
reputational harm and, if so, whether that had affected his demeanor
during the deposition, he responded:
Absolutely, I am more than pissed off at these people. I
intend to seek my revenge and sue the fuck out of them
when this is over, and you can guarantee I will not let
Elizabeth Holmes have another fucking company as long as
she lives. I will use my ability to file patents and fuck with
her till she dies, absolutely.