New Orleans tech vendor elaborates on being sued by City Hall

Mark Lewis, president of the Louisiana Technology Council, issued the following statement today to elaborate on his response to a civil lawsuit filed Monday by the city claiming that the LTC breached a confidentiality agreement related to its work at City Hall.
The lawsuit revealed that Chris Reade, an LTC subcontractor, received a subpoena July 22 commanding him to testify before the grand jury on July 24 and demanding that he turn over "any and all recovered e-mails involving C. Ray Nagin, Gregory Meffert, Anthony Jones, Mark St. Pierre and/or Harrison Boyd from May 2002 to the present."

Here is Lewis' statement in its entirety:

"In our last meeting with the city on July 28, the LTC returned all copies of the data obtained in our data recovery analysis. We never shared any of the content of the data to any third party or to any other entity other than what was requested in a federal subpoena.

"The LTC has not violated our non-disclosure agreement with the city as we have not shared the content of any of the data recovered to anyone. In addition, we have never admitted that our analysis and recovery has been flawed in any way. The LTC still stands firmly behind the results contained in our July 6 report to the city, which speaks for itself.

"The LTC has from the beginning, worked in cooperation with the city of New Orleans, and has tried to resolve this situation amicably by providing the city exactly with what they asked for in our most recent meeting, which included all copies of the recovered data and assurance that no additional copies remained, other than what was request by subpoena.

"We fully complied with their request and felt no additional action was necessary. The LTC was disappointed that the city of New Orleans initiated this needless and baseless litigation. The LTC will defend itself vigorously and intends to prevail on all merits."

The Nagin administration hired the nonprofit LTC in May to try to retrieve the mayor's appointment calendar entries and e-mail messages, sought by WWL-TV through a public records request. The firm was fired last month after it announced that it had uncovered evidence that Nagin's missing e-mail messages were intentionally removed by someone with high-level access to the computer system.


Source