Appel ’81 accused of violating order

Gusciora v. McGreevey

According to a statement issued by Sequoia on Dec. 18, a Mercer County Superior Court judge ordered sanctions against Appel for violating a protective order in the case twice. Sequoia also claims in the statement that “Appel [was] ordered by [the] judge to apologize and pay motion legal fees to Sequoia Voting Systems.”

In response, Appel issued a statement Dec. 24 in which he said that the information contained in Sequoia’s statement is not true.

“They claim that I violated a Protective Order; they claim that I was ordered to apologize to Sequoia; and they claim that the Court ordered sanctions against me. None of these assertions is true,” Appel said in the statement.

Sequoia asserted that Appel violated the protective order when he “prematurely shared contents of his expert report for the Plaintiffs” in a Louisiana court and that he did so again when he asked computer science professor Ed Felten to review his report of Sequoia’s systems.

Appel refuted this claim, noting that in the Louisiana case his comments about the conclusions of the report “overlapped with statements I had already [made] in public over a year previously” and that the report did not appear anywhere in the media from when he submitted it to the Louisiana court to when it was released to the public by a New Jersey court.

He added that sharing with his colleague was not in violation of the protective order “since his review of my report did not constitute ‘publicizing in any media.’ ”

Michelle Shafer, Sequoia’s vice president for communication and external affairs, noted that the company “stand[s] behind everything that is in the press release.”

In his response to the statement, Appel explained that he was not ordered to and did not apologize to Sequoia.

“On November 21, 2008, I agreed to a consent decree, apologizing to the Court, not to Sequoia,” Appel said.

Shafer, however, said that Sequoia is not itself expecting an apology, noting that the “press release never said that he [Appel] was ordered to apologize to Sequoia, it said he was ordered to apologize to the court.”

Though both the firm and Appel now say that the apology was intended to be directed to the court, the two continue to disagree on whether Appel violated the court’s protective order. Sequoia said that Appel did, in fact, violate the protective order, noting that Appel agreed to pay Sequoia $1,000 to cover legal fees.

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“He did violate the court’s protective order twice, and that’s why he was ordered to apologize, and that’s why he was required to pay Sequoia [$1,000], which he did,” Shafer said. “This makes it clear that he did violate the protective order.”

The court, however, never officially declared Appel’s actions violations, said Grayson Barber, Appel’s attorney.

“The judge never wound up making a formal ruling, never banged the gavel,” explained Barber, who is a visiting fellow at Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy.

Rather, the “judge essentially brokered an agreement,” she explained.

Felten noted that he was not in court on Nov. 21.

“I don’t have first-hand knowledge whether Sequoia’s press release is accurate, but as I understand, contrary to Sequoia’s press release, the court did not find that there had been a violation,” he said.

Barber said that Sequoia’s statements are simply personal attacks on Appel to “discredit him.”

“The bottom line is that he did not violate a protective order, and there were no sanctions, and Sequoia continues to despise him and doing their best to get rid of him … They want states to buy their voting machines, they want to get him out of their way, but they haven’t,” she said.