Courtroom discussions suggest Apple CEO Tim Cook may be making a visit to Santa Ana to take the stand in defense of the world’s most valuable tech company, in its trade secret case with Irvine’s Masimo; see Peter J. Brennan’s front-page story for more on the early days of the trial, in which medtech Masimo is seeking $3.1B.
Masimo and its lawyers from Irvine’s Knobbe Martens have previously asserted that its smoking gun in the case involves an unsolicited email sent from Marcelo Lamego to Cook at 12:54 a.m. on an October night in 2013.
Lamego, who was at that time being groomed to become Masimo’s chief technical officer, asked Cook for a job in that email. He was soon contacted by the company, and was eventually hired at Apple, where he stayed six months.
Masimo has already won a separate case against Lamego and a company he started, True Wearables: the judge in that case, James V. Selna, ruled that they stole Masimo’s trade secrets.
Selna’s also overseeing the current Masimo Corp. v. Apple Inc. case.
Multifamily and industrial developers take note: there’s a far more lucrative land play in Irvine these days, at least according to city officials.
Documents indicate the city is now considering paying $285M to buy and close the All American Asphalt plant near the upscale community of Orchard Hills, whose residents have complained about smoke and smells coming from the construction site.
The deal works out to a head-scratching price of $24.7M an acre for the property, the Voice of OC noted in a report last week.
“It’s unclear if that’s at market rate,” the report said.
Given residential land in the area rarely goes for much more than $5M an acre, it’s safe to say the answer to that question is no.
The deal works out to a price of nearly $900 per resident in the city. Irvine officials believe they’d get the money back by selling more homes on land donated by Irvine Co.
A March 29 LA Times story on a rise of noise complaints and community angst on Balboa Island, due to fractional home ownership, led with an anecdote on a couple who “decided to sell their home in Irvine and move to Balboa Island eight years ago because they wanted something more than a comfortable place to live.”
Not mentioned in the story was that half of that couple, Max Gardner, certainly knew a thing or two about community building; he previously ran the apartment division of Irvine
Co., the largest landlord in the state.
Gardner, who also previously ran the OC operations of United Way, and who serves as an adviser to MIG Real Estate, certainly had a comfortable place to live while in Irvine. He previously was a resident of Shady Canyon, the city’s most exclusive community.
