Three-and-a-half years in the past, a lawsuit hit the San Mateo, Ca. county courthouse that briefly attracted the eye of the worldwide enterprise capital group given its salacious nature. The defendant: longtime VC Michael Goguen, who’d spent 20 years with Sequoia Capital in Menlo Park, Ca. The plaintiff: a former intimate who described him via the submitting as a “worse predator than the human traffickers.” She mentioned within the submitting that she would know, having turn into a “victim of human trafficking” at age 15 when she was “brought to America in 2001,” then “sold as a dancer to a strip club” in Texas, which is the place she says first encountered Goguen.
What she needed from the lawsuit was cash that she mentioned was owed to her by Goguen: $40 million over 4 installments that the lawsuit said have been for “compensation for the sexual abuse and [a sexual] infection she contracted from him.” According to her go well with, Goguen agreed to those phrases, paying Baptiste a primary installment of $10 million earlier than refusing to make additional funds.
At the time, Goguen known as the allegations “horrific” and steered Baptiste was a spurned lover, saying they’d had a “10+ year romantic relationship that ended badly.” He additionally filed a cross criticism alleging extortion.
Today, that cross criticism lives on, however Baptiste’s case towards Goguen was simply dismissed by arbitrator Read Ambler, a retired decide who served 20 years with the Santa Clara County Superior Court and who wrote in a ruling filed yesterday in San Mateo that Baptiste’s failures to bear medical examinations doomed her case, as did her failure to supply paperwork essential within the discovery course of.
“The record presented further establishes that Baptiste’s’ failures were willful,” Ambler writes. “Baptiste appears to believe that the information responsive to the discovery at issue is either not relevant, or with respect to the medical examinations, not permitted by law. While Baptiste is free to believe what she wants to believe, the orders are binding on Baptiste, and her failure to comply with the orders is unacceptable.”
Baptiste doesn’t at present have authorized illustration, although 4 units of attorneys have represented her over time.
Patricia Glaser, a high-powered lawyer who took on Baptiste’s case initially (and later agreed to symbolize Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein), requested to be relieved from the case 5 months later, citing “irreconcilable differences.” More lately, an L.A.-based couple that operates the Sherman Law Group in L.A. filed a movement to be relieved as Baptiste’s counsel, citing “irreconcilable differences and a breakdown in communication.”
Goguen’s attorneys say he’ll proceed to pursue his counterclaims towards Baptiste and appears ahead to “complete vindication.”
Though Ambler by no means remarked on the deserves or Baptiste’s claims, Goguen’s lawyer Diane Doolittle additional mentioned as we speak in an announcement that: “Amber Laurel Baptiste’s sensationalized lawsuit towards Silicon Valley enterprise capitalist Michael Goguen collapsed beneath the load of its personal falsehood yesterday, when a decide dismissed the case due to Baptiste’s repeated, egregious and willful misconduct. Over the course of this case, Baptiste perjured herself, hid, destroyed and falsified key proof, and demonstrated her contempt for the authorized system by systematically violating quite a few courtroom orders.”
Baptiste couldn’t be reached for remark.
Baptiste’s lawsuit towards Goguen prompted Sequoia to half methods with him virtually instantly. Later the very day that TechCrunch broke information of the go well with in 2016, a Sequoia spokesman informed us that whereas the agency understood “these allegations of serious improprieties” to be “unproven and unrelated to Sequoia” its administration committee had nonetheless “decided that Mike’s departure was the appropriate course of action.”
Goguen, who bought an $11 million residence in…
