My Declaration Today in Alameda County Superior Court in California Public Records Act Case For UC-Berkeley Records in Ted Agu Football Conditioning Death
October 31, 2019Today’s Whole Court Package in Our Public Records Act Case For University of California-Berkeley Documents in Ted Agu Football Conditioning Death Cover-Up
October 31, 2019I, Roy S. Gordet, declare as follows:
1. I am admitted to the Bar of the State of California and I am counsel of record in this matter for the Petitioner, Irvin Muchnick.
2. On October 3, 2019, a deposition of Solomon B Fulp (“Fulp”) was taken in this case (“Fulp 2019 Deposition”), Exhibit 4 is identified as “Fulp 2019 Deposition” and is submitted in support of the Motion. Exhibit 4 consists of selected pages from that deposition transcript with yellow highlighting for the most pertinent text, including the Court Reporter’s certification page and the cover page. These transcript pages are 1, 3, 17, 20, 30, 32, 40, 56 and 62.
3. Fulp stated that he had been deposed in the civil lawsuit brought by the family of the late Ted Agu (“Agu”) against Respondent (“Fulp 2015 Deposition”). That deposition was taken on September 23, 2015. Exhibit 3 submitted in support of this Motion consists of discrete pages from the Fulp 2015 Deposition transcript, namely transcript pages 1, 7, 27, 28, 29, 44, 57, 60, 61 and 64, including the cover page and the court reporter’s certification page. The submitted pages have yellow highlighting of the most pertinent text.
4. On pages 60-61 of Exhibit 3 (Fulp 2015 Deposition), under cross-examination from his own attorney, Fulp stated that his email server had been examined for relevant email messages by the internal IT specialist at University of California pursuant to document discovery requests in the Agu civil lawsuit.
4. After the filing of this Petition, the parties undertook to identify by dint of a search algorithm documents in the possession of Respondent that are responsive to Petitioner’s previous CPRA requests.
5. Over a months long period, Respondent made disclosures of approximately 730 pages of documents. Respondent asserted that some of the documents were privileged; however, in lieu of a privilege log, Respondent unilaterally decided to disclose documents in redacted format, thereby providing what Respondent considered was sufficient information to satisfy Respondent’s obligation under the applicable law and practice to justify claims of privilege.
6. On September 6, 2018, Respondent produced approximately 387 pages of documents, many of which were heavily redacted, ostensibly on grounds of attorney client privilege.
7. Among the documents produced by Respondent on that day are Bates numbered pages UC 0450 – UC 0466 consisting of 17 heavily redacted pages of a unitary email communication from Respondent’s then Deputy Director of Athletics and Chief Operating Officer, Solomon Fulp, to the recipient at the top of the email thread identified as “Dad”. This is the document that Petitioner by this Motion seeks to have Respondent produce in unredacted form.
8. Submitted as Exhibit 2 is Fulp’s resume which I found on a public site on the Internet, which Fulp stated at the 2019 Fulp Deposition (Exhibit 4) he had written. (Exhibit 4, page 32)
I declare under penalty of perjury under the laws of the State of California that the foregoing is true and correct.
Executed at Daly City, California on October 30, 2019.
Respectfully submitted,
Roy S. Gordet, Attorney for Petitioner Irvin Muchnick