NEW ORLEANS [AP] — Knowing the ultimate market might be worth billions of dollars, men connected to New Orleans’ government and Dell Inc. plotted to steal a video surveillance system developed by two local companies, the local companies’ lawyers told jurors this week.
Consequently, the owners of Southern Electronics Supply Inc. and Active Solutions LLC “lost it all,” attorney Gladstone Jones said in opening arguments of a civil trial involving New Orleans’ problem-plagued camera program.
Those arguments came after a jury was seated Tuesday afternoon.
Defense attorneys denied the conspiracy claims and cast the plaintiffs as losers in a business process in which the price of their cameras and the pace of installation cost them business with the city.
“They’re here to blame a lot of people,” but they have only themselves to blame for any lack of success, said Michael Kenny, an attorney for Dell.
Along with Dell, defendants include Mayor Ray Nagin, the city’s former technology chief Greg Meffert and technology firms NetMethods and Veracent, started by one-time Meffert associate Mark St. Pierre.
The plaintiffs claim Meffert and others tied to the technology office misappropriated their system and conspired with Dell to sell it, seeing a huge market potential.
St. Pierre had alleged ties to the technology office during Meffert’s tenure, and the plaintiffs claim he formed NetMethods to compete with it after they’d contracted with the city for the camera program in 2004.
NetMethods never did business with the city, though Veracent did, said an attorney for the companies, Thomas Flanagan. The city had a right to buy cameras from another source and looked for options out of frustration with the cost of the plaintiffs’ system and the pace of its rollout, he said.
“Competition is not always easy,” he said, adding that his clients did not steal anyone’s technology.
Kenny said Dell hasn’t made huge sums of money off camera sales in Louisiana; of 129 systems it sold, it made $85,000 in profits, he said.
The case filed in 2007 has gained attention in recent months, with a scathing report by the city’s inspector general on the technology office and its handling of camera contracts — and the disclosure in late June of a federal criminal investigation involving that office. Meffert attorney Randall Smith has said Meffert is a target of that probe.
In the civil trial, state Judge Rosemary Ledet has left open the potential for the jury to consider punitive damages should that becomes an issue. Louisiana law allows for punitive damages in “exceptional” cases.
