June 2, 2026

Part 13: The Advice of Opposing Counsel

In Part 5, I showed an excerpt of hidden video from my June 28, 2017 meeting with Andrew Hull.

At the time, the obvious point was the admission itself.

Valeo’s lead attorney acknowledged that the Compensation Agreement had never been signed, that there was no signed original, and that Valeo did not have signed copies.

That was significant enough.

But after Part 12, that same video should look different.

Because by the time I sat across from Hull in that conference room, he already knew the question I had been asking for months.

He knew I had asked whether the document available for inspection included the “Entire Agreement” as defined by Valeo’s own Employment Agreement.

He knew that meant the Employment Agreement, its exhibits, and the Compensation Agreement.

He knew I had asked whether there was an executed Compensation Agreement.

He knew I had been seriously ill.

He knew I had told him I was having trouble driving safely even short distances.

He knew that after one coughing episode during a short drive near my home, I had blacked out, crashed, and totaled Kim’s truck.

And he knew there was a simple way to avoid all of it.

Valeo did not have to make me drive to Indianapolis.

They did not have to force a physical inspection.

They did not have to turn the issue into a months-long procedural standoff.

They could have mailed a copy with an affidavit.

Or they could have answered the direct question in writing:

Did the complete, signed agreement exist?

That was the question.

It was not complicated.

It did not require a hearing.

It did not require a long drive.

It did not require me to risk another coughing blackout on the road.

It required one honest answer.

Yes or no.

Instead, the answer kept being delayed.

By June 28, 2017, the procedural window was closing. Summary judgment had been filed. Valeo was asking the court to enter judgment against me. And the foundational document issue still had not been answered.

So I went to Indianapolis.

I did not go because I wanted to.

I went because I needed to eliminate the last possible excuse.

If Valeo had the complete, signed agreement, they could show it.

If they did not, someone needed to finally say so.

When I arrived at Hoover Hull Turner’s office, I was shown to a conference room. A folder was brought in. It included an Employment Agreement.

It did not include a signed Compensation Agreement.

Then Hull entered the room.

That is the moment shown in Part 5.

I asked directly for the Compensation Agreement.

Hull said it had never been signed.

He said there was not an original, because an original would suggest a signed document.

He said they did not have signed copies.

That was the answer I had been trying to get for months.

But the rest of the meeting matters too.

Because after the admission, the question became obvious:

Now what?

If Valeo had been suing me based on an “Entire Agreement,” and the Compensation Agreement that defined my pay had never been signed, then the court needed to know that before entering summary judgment.

I believed the court needed to know that immediately.

A few minutes later, I raised the internal management materials I had found — the same kind of materials already discussed earlier in this series — showing that Valeo management had planned performance fines before I ever signed the Employment Agreement.

I told Hull that evidence would be part of my next response to summary judgment.

Then he told me there would not be another response.



“Well, there won’t be any more responses to summary judgment. Summary Judgment is briefed. It’s over.”

That is the part I did not show in Part 5.

First, the missing agreement was finally admitted.

Then, when I identified the internal wage-fine evidence I intended to bring to the court, I was told the time to use it had passed.

Think about that sequence.

For months, I had asked whether the complete agreement existed.

For months, I did not get a direct answer.

During that same period, I was seriously ill, had crashed a vehicle after blacking out while coughing, and had told Valeo’s lawyers that driving to Indianapolis was not safe.

Still, the answer was not provided in writing.

Still, the case moved forward.

Still, the court allowed the case to continue.

Then, when I finally made the trip and got the answer in person, Valeo’s lead attorney told me summary judgment was already briefed and over.

Whether that statement was legal advice, litigation posture, or a warning dressed up as fact, the message was unmistakable:

The truth may have finally come out, but I was being told it was too late to matter.

That is what made the June 28 meeting so important.

It was not just a hidden video.

It was not just an awkward admission.

It was the end of a months-long process where a basic prerequisite question had been avoided until I was told the procedural door had closed.

And that is why this case kept getting stranger.

By that point, I already knew the wage fines mattered.

I already knew Valeo had reduced my compensation.

I already knew there were internal documents showing that performance compensation reductions had been planned years earlier.

I already knew the Compensation Agreement issue mattered because different versions of the agreement created different defenses.

If the original compensation terms controlled, then the later wage-fine structure was a problem.

If the later compensation terms controlled, then Valeo still had to explain how an unsigned document with wage-fine provisions became enforceable against me.

And if no signed Compensation Agreement existed, then Valeo had to explain why it had sued on an “Entire Agreement” without producing the complete agreement its own document referenced.

That was why I had been asking.

I was not asking because I misunderstood the case.

I was asking because they refused to identify the actual foundation of the case.

And after June 28, the answer was no longer theoretical.

There was no signed Compensation Agreement.

There was no signed original.

There were no signed copies.

But the case did not stop.

The filings did not stop.

The pressure did not stop.

Instead, the dispute shifted from what existed to what the court would allow Valeo to rely on anyway.

That is where this story begins to move from paper to pixels.

Because at the time, I was still mostly trapped in the paper version of the case: mailed filings, scanned copies, clerk-stamped documents, low-quality images, and whatever paper exhibits Valeo chose to provide.

I could read documents.

I could object.

I could ask questions.

I could file motions.

But I could not yet see what later became visible in the electronic files.

I could not yet see the digital fingerprints.

I could not yet see who created certain PDFs.

I could not yet see when certain documents were generated.

I could not yet see how court orders and litigation exhibits had moved through electronic systems before they became the official-looking documents I was expected to accept.

That came later.

And when it did, the case looked very different.

Part 5 showed the admission.

Part 13 shows the trap around the admission.

Next, I will show what I could not see then, but can see now.

The metadata.

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Part 13: The Advice of Opposing Counsel

In Part 5 , I showed an excerpt of hidden video from my June 28, 2017 meeting with Andrew Hull. At the time, the obvious point was the admis...