Part 10: The Procedural Blindfold

 

In Part 7, I shared the “Aha!” moment of June 6, 2017: finding the internal 2009 PowerPoint presentations that proved Valeo management had premeditated a system of wage fines months before I joined the firm. I produced those records to Andrew Hull on June 15, 2017, and the tone of the litigation shifted instantly.

But finding the proof was only half the battle. To save their case—and protect their business model—Valeo’s counsel had to ensure that evidence never reached the judge’s desk, or public view. To do that, they relied on a procedural “lost envelope” tactic that had begun nearly a year earlier.

The Triple Filing (September 21, 2016)

By late 2016, I was still attempting to get the firm to produce the actual, signed “Entire Agreement” they were suing me over. On September 21, 2016, I filed a single packet with the court and served a copy on Andrew Hull’s office.

The envelope contained three distinct documents :

1. A Trial Rule 9.2 Request: Formally asking the firm to produce the original, signed instruments.

2. A Response to a Motion to Compel: Addressing the firm’s claims about discovery.

3. A Sworn Affidavit: A detailed statement explaining my destruction of data—the very document Valeo would later claim was “missing”.

The “Spoliation” Spin

This is where the narrative was intentionally twisted. In the affidavit, I explained that I had destroyed certain records around December 7–8, 2014. Andrew Hull began calling this “spoliation of evidence”.

In reality, there was no destruction of any evidence related to the actual litigation. As an industry expert and former regulatory Chief Compliance Officer, I was fulfilling a fiduciary and federal obligation under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) to protect sensitive client financial information. Once I left the firm, I had no legal right to retain private client data like social security numbers and account balances. I removed papers backwards from binders to avoid seeing them, had my twins shred them, and then burned the waste in a chicken wire basket in four inches of snow.

The Vanishing Act

Months later, during our face-to-face meeting on June 28, 2017—after they had already seen my 2009 “receipts”—Andrew Hull looked at a copy of that Affidavit and made a startling claim: “I’ve never seen that”.

This was the disconnect: The firm acknowledged receiving the first two documents from that September 21st envelope—the 9.2 Request and the Response. Yet he claimed the third document, providing the very explanation they were demanding, had somehow vanished. More importantly, that Affidavit was a matter of public record, filed with the court and available on the electronic docket for their review at any time.

The Trap: Motion for Sanctions

The firm used this claimed “ignorance” of my filing as the foundation for a brutal legal maneuver. On May 10, 2017, they filed a Motion for Discovery Sanctions, arguing that I had “purposely failed to comply” with court orders to explain the spoliation.

They asked the court to preclude me from offering any evidence in my own defense. By claiming they “never saw” the document that explained my client data protection, they successfully painted me as an evasive litigant.

The Result: The Legal Blindfold

The court granted their request on August 23, 2017. Because of a “lost” envelope and a claim that a public court filing didn’t exist, I was barred from introducing the internal 2009 records that proved Valeo’s “Performance Standards” were premeditated wage fines.

I was being forced to litigate a case where the firm was suing on a contract they couldn’t produce, while I was barred from showing the court the proof that their billing model was illegal.

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In Part 11, we look at the “Rule 9.2 Defaults”—litigating for years over an “Entire Agreement” that the firm’s lead counsel eventually admitted never existed in signed form.

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Expert Tip for the Reader: As this record shows, the goal of elite litigation isn’t always to find the truth; sometimes, it is simply to ensure the truth is inadmissible. Never assume the public record will protect you if the court and opposing counsel are in coordination.