More News the WRecKord Never Reported: Federal Judge Rejected WHETSTONE’s $45 million lawsuit against Nestlé for trade secret and contract breaches

On December 11, 2003, United States District Judge Henry Lee Adams, Jr. granted summary judgment against WHETSTONE CANDY Co., INC. in its $45,000,000 trade secret infringement and breach of contract lawsuit against Nestlé.

St. Augustine lawyer Robert L. McLeod , II represented WHETSTONE. Jacksonville lawyers William Sheppard and D. Gray Thomas of Sheppard, White, Thomas & Kachergus, PA and three Washington, D.C. lawyers --- James Douglas Baldridge (Venable LLP) and Brian D. Wallach and Peter E. Moll (Howrey, Simon, Arnold & White, LLP) -- represented Defendant Nestlé..

In its $45,000,000 complaint in federal court, WHETSTONE alleged Nestlé that misappropriated its trade secrets, but Judge Adams held WHETSTONE failed to protect its trade secrets and did not show they were misappropriated by Nestlé.

WHETSTONE never proved its case. Henry Whetstone said in his deposition, taken by lawyer Wallach, “do I have evidence, no. You haven’t been forthcoming in discovery.”

WHETSTONE never proved there was any misappropriation of its trade secrets.

WHETSTONE never proved it had protected its trade secrets.

WHETSTONE never bothered to get its employees or contract janitors and tradesmen to sign nondisclosure agreements.

WHETSTONE was ordered by Judge Adams to pay $9,964.00 in costs

WHETSTONE did not appeal.

However, Judge Adams denied a motion to hold Henry Whetstone in contempt of court.

Not one word of this ever made it into local newspapers, including the St. Augustine WRecKord and Jacksonville TImes-Union, owned by right-wing MORRIS PUBLISHING CO. of Augusta, Georgia..

“Let them eat cake” was the bon mot often attributed to Marie Antoinette.

“Let them live on handouts” is the de facto motto of the St. Augustine WRecKord and MORRIS PUBLISHING.

Newspaper reporters and editors who lack gumption perpetually ignore the important news stories, as if their job was to cover up for polecats rather than to cover the news This disturbing proclivity led MORRIS PUBLISHING to file bankruptcy earlier this year.

Another wrinkle: in 2008, veteran Washington, D.C. investigative reporter James Ridgeway reported (see below) in Mother Jones magazine that Nestlé took trash from WHETSTONE’s dumpster.

If WHETSTONE had known about this in 2002, it might have avoided summary judgment and gone to trial. If WHETSTONE had read Mother Jones (a progressive publication) and had jumped on that news and hired a hardball litigator in 2008, it might have prevailed on a court to reopen and reconsider his allegations. Federal court records show that WHETSTONE did not do so.

The Whetstone family identify with the Republican Party, support City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS, and are not likely to read progressive publications like Mother Jones. If only the Whetstone family were liberal Democrats, they might have learned timely of the Nestlé spying operation and dumpster-diving in WHETSTONE's trash -- they might have been able to reopen their case.

For more information, you can read 202 public records online in Case no 3:01-cv-415-3-25HTS, Whetstone Candy Co., Inc. v. Nestlé USA, available at pacer.gov.