FOR nine years, John Juriga lived with a lie. The General Motors Corporation, his employer, had been battling an important trade-secret case, and Mr. Juriga, an engineer, had been hailed as a hero for finding a crucial memo that was a linchpin of the company’s defense. But, just weeks before the case was to go to trial last spring in Superior Court in Waterbury, Mr. Juriga broke down and admitted he had faked the evidence.
Mr. Juriga’s forgery is just one of many extraordinary twists in a bizarre business dispute that has been simmering in Connecticut since 1989. At issue: Did General Motors steal a breakthrough design in automotive cooling technology for its Corvette from Jack Evans, an inventor from Sharon, and then attempt, as Mr. Evans claimed, to drive him out of business so he wouldn’t have the will or the means to fight back? G.M. denied the charge, but Mr. Evans insisted he has been robbed of a valuable trade secret.
”G.M. stole from me,” he said, ”and I’ll never stop fighting until I get back what was mine.”
Despite the forgery, G.M. won its case in Superior Court in August. Judge Robert McWeeny ruled in favor of the company, saying that Mr. Evans effectively gave away his rights to his trade secret years ago when he demonstrated the system to G.M.
Mr. Evans, who was seeking $612 million in damages, filed an appeal in November. A well-heeled group of 163 investors, among them several members of the du Pont family, is helping to fund the litigation and will get a cut if Mr. Evans wins. Fish & Richardson, one of the nation’s largest law firms specializing in intellectual property, is willing to gamble on the case. The firm, which has represented Mr. Evans since 1999, said it would continue the legal fight on a partial contingency basis.
This dispute is costing both sides millions. Mr. Evans estimated his legal bills are $3.5 million. G.M. won’t disclose how much the case has cost the company, but, to handle its defense, it retained a hard-driving and high-priced litigator, John T. Hickey Jr., of Kirkland & Ellis. Legal experts estimated the company’s legal bill could be as high as $6 million.