Editor, Gazette-Journal:

This is in reference to last week’s front-page article, "Judge quashes subpoena in Hicks lawsuit."

Five persons had been subpoenaed to provide their computer hard drives to be imaged for material relevant to this lawsuit against Commonwealth’s Attorney Bob Hicks for defamation, dated August, 2009. Some of you have had questions about this story.

The outcome of the Sept. 15 court appearance was that none of the five would have to comply with the subpoena; none would surrender his/her computer drive to Troutman Sanders’ attorney Anthony Troy.

All five had provided retrieval from their computers when the request was made. However, a subpoena for more—for the actual hard drives—followed.

At the court hearing, two who had provided such retrieval, John Adams and Patricia Cowan, won their motion to quash the subpoena by default. Neither still owns the computer in use in 2007 or 2008, the designated period.

Ken Gibson, attorney for Garr Johnson, convinced the judge that nothing on his client’s computer was in any way relevant to the defamation suit before the court; therefore, Mr. Johnson’s motion to quash the subpoena was granted by the judge.

As for the other two—Arnold Nye and Louise Theberge—the judge called for an agreement between the two sets of attorneys that Nye and Theberge to have their hard drives scanned by a chosen third party for a new retrieval, using agreed-upon search words. This new information will be carefully analyzed by their attorneys, Tommy Norment and Matt Smith, who will pass on to Troutman Sanders what they think is relevant.

Bottom line: No computers or hard drives to be furnished to the requesting attorneys, by any of the five.

John Adams

Gloucester Point, Va.