Hewlett-Packard Co asked a Delaware Chancery Court judge to issue an order saying it doesn't have to comply with a request for thousands of internal documents from dissident director Walter Hewlett.
Walter Hewlett sued the company March 28 in an effort to invalidate proxy votes he says tipped the balance in favor of Hewlett-Packard's planned US$18.7 billion acquisition of Compaq Computer Corp. He claims the company bought votes from Deutsche Bank AG in exchange for part of a business loan package.
In papers made public late yesterday Hewlett-Packard's lawyers ask Judge William Chandler III to block Walter Hewlett's "oppressive" subpoenas that "would involve locating, gathering and reviewing hundreds of thousands [if not millions] of pages of documents" within two weeks.
"The request seeks literally every scrap of paper relating to the proposed integration of H-P and Compaq" from a team of 1,000 who worked about 1.3 million hours on the acquisition, company lawyer Robert Payson said in the motion.
"We have little confidence that even a massive diversion of re-sources within HP would permit compliance with the requests," company lawyers wrote.
As an alternative to full protection from the subpoenas, Hewlett-Packard asked Chandler to consider limiting Walter Hewlett's document requests to status reports about the purchase to the board and Compaq, company documents related to "the recent credit facility in which Deutsche Bank participated," and documents from company executives relating to Deutsche Bank's proxies.
Payson told Chandler in court papers that Walter Hewlett's lawyers won't agree to the scaled-down request.
Shares of Palo Alto, California-based Hewlett-Packard, which reported US$45.2 billion in fiscal 2001 sales and a US$408 million profit, fell 12 cents to US$17.25.
The company is the second-largest computer maker in the world after International Business Machines Corp.
Shares of Houston-based Compaq, which reported US$33.5 billion in fiscal 2001 sales and a US$785 million loss, fell 24 cents to US$9.58.
Chandler will hold a hearing in Wilmington, Delaware tomorrow morning on Hewlett-Packard's motion to dismiss the case.
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