{"id":549518,"date":"2006-07-13T19:19:40","date_gmt":"2006-07-13T19:19:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/wordpress\/technology\/549518-squabble-over-google-s-private-jet.html"},"modified":"2006-07-13T19:19:40","modified_gmt":"2006-07-13T19:19:40","slug":"squabble-over-google-s-private-jet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/technology\/549518-squabble-over-google-s-private-jet.html","title":{"rendered":"Squabble over Google’s private jet"},"content":{"rendered":"

Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge, Joseph Huber, scheduled a hearing to resolve the dispute. The judge declined to issue an emergency restraining order sought by Larry Page and Sergey Brin on grounds that the designer put the wealthy duo and their families at risk by divulging design details. <\/font><\/p>\n

Among the proposed features Leslie Jennings shared with the Wall Street Journal were hammocks hung from the jet ceiling and Brin having a "California king" size bed in his mid-jet suite adjoining Page’s bedroom. <\/font><\/p>\n

Jennings was quoted as saying that Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt referred to the aircraft as "a party plane" and was to have a forward lounge. <\/font><\/p>\n

Information about the jet’s layout could enable assailants "to be most effective in a violent attack or hostage-taking situation,"\u00a0 former US Secret Service agent Eric Powell said in an affidavit filed in court. <\/font><\/p>\n

The details also tip potential spies off to where best to plant listening devices on an aircraft used by Google executives and their\u00a0 associates, Powell maintained. <\/font><\/p>\n

"Concerns about these matters are not theoretical," Powell wrote. <\/font><\/p>\n

The slated show-down in Huber’s courtroom stemmed from a contract dispute between Jennings and Blue City Holdings, the\u00a0 Delaware limited liability company that technically owned the used Boeing 767-200. <\/font><\/p>\n

Bruce Cleeland, the lawyer representing Jennings in the California case, said he received a copy of the latest filing and that the purpose of the lawsuit "seemed to be a moving target." <\/font><\/p>\n

Jennings was being accused of violating a court order not to share the jet plans with anyone, according to Cleeland. <\/font><\/p>\n

"I’m going through it now to figure out what, if anything, is accurate or inaccurate," Cleeland said. <\/font><\/p>\n

Jennings, 67, was hired by Blue City to transform a former Quantas Airways jet capable of carrying 180 passengers into airborne transport worthy of an "executive\/head-of-state," court documents said. Google co-founders Page and Brin reportedly bought the jet for personal use in 2005. <\/font><\/p>\n

The Internet billionaires have strived to keep details of the jet’s renovation and whereabouts secret. Jennings was to be paid 340,000 dollars to design and manage the refurbishing, but the contract gave Blue City the option of canceling it at a whim, according to court documents. <\/font><\/p>\n

The contract also had a confidentiality clause requiring Jennings, who is based in Oklahoma, to keep project details secret,\u00a0 court paperwork indicated. <\/font><\/p>\n

Jennings asked the US Federal Aviation Administration for a 200,000 dollar lien against the aircraft after his contract was terminated early. He also took his case to court in Texas, where a company doing the renovation work was located. <\/font><\/p>\n

Blue City reportedly contended Jennings design work wasn’t adequate and that he didn’t effectively manage the multi-million\u00a0 dollar renovation job. In a Wall Street Journal article published last week, Jennings accused Blue City of trying to crush him under legal costs and of terminating his contract under false pretenses. <\/font><\/p>\n

Inet-Bridge<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Silicon Valley judge is being asked to stop an aviation designer from gabbing about a plan by high-flying Google’s founders to convert a wide-body passenger jet into a globe-ranging party plane. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-549518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549518"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=549518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549518\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}