HP Exec Claims Evidence Was Falsified

HP has been accused of producing “false and fabricated” evidence against a former sales executive who the firm claims stole confidential information.

Adrian Jones, who was a sales executive at HP, left the firm to join Oracle in February 2011. HP claims that Jones nabbed a load of confidential information between 10 and 11 February using a removable hard drive. Jones told the court that the hard drive was used by HP for backup and was never in his possession, saying that HP and its outside counsel have confirmed these facts.

Jones’ current employer Oracle said that the accusations leveled at its employee are simply not true, with Deborah Hellinger, a spokeswoman for Oracle telling Bloomberg, “The central allegation in HP’s employment lawsuit against Adrian Jones has turned out to be complete fiction…. If they did it knowingly then HP and their lawyers should be sanctioned. If they did it mistakenly then they simply owe Mr Jones an apology.”

HP is said to have probed Jones’ relationship with a female subordinate, for whom Jones allegedly arranged a 94 per cent pay rise and expensed travel that had no business purpose.

Jones’ case mirrors that of former HP CEO Mark Hurd who left the company after similar expense discrepances were brought to light. Hurd, a close friend of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, then joined Oracle as co-president within weeks of leaving his post at HP.

HP and Oracle have been going at it hammer and tongs in a largely public row over Oracle’s decision to dump support for Intel’s Itanium architecture. The two companies are in various other legal battles as well, with HP claiming that Oracle had gone from being a partner to a “bitter antagonist”. We assume the next lawsuit will claim that Oracle stole HP’s lunch money and beat it up behind the bike shed, or perhaps the other way around.

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