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Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum's outside attorneys suffered a loss recently in federal court.
(AP/Statesman Journal, Thomas Patterson)
Oregon's court battle with Oracle America is not going to get cheaper anytime soon.
In August 2014, the state and the California software giant each filed lawsuits blaming the other for the $300-million collapse of the much-touted Cover Oregon health insurance website project.
Essentially a two-front war split between federal and state courts, the litigation has already generated $3.6 million in billings for the private law firm handling the case for Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum.
Oregon had hoped to restrict the fighting to just one court by knocking out the $23 million federal lawsuit filed by Oracle. But a judge on Nov. 18 ruled against the state, saying the Oracle case was strong enough to survive the state's motions to dismiss it.
Oracle's federal case seeks to be paid for non-contract work it engaged in to fix numerous problems that kept the Cover Oregon website from launching when planned, Oct. 1, 2013. It accuses the state of violating copyright law by using the Oracle code without having fully paid for it.
The judge sided with Oracle, saying its contract for the website work overrode Oregon's claim to being immune from copyright claims.
The legal bill for Rosenblum's outside attorney, Markowitz Herbold PC since September 2014 is approaching the $4 million mark, as first reported by Willamette Week.
But that spending rate is on the rise. After spending nearly $340,000 in the first six months of this year, Markowitz has billed about $940,000 since July 1.
In part, that's because the Markowitz attorneys have had to go through thousands of pages of documents to delete personal information of Oregonians who used the Cover Oregon enrollment process. The state had sought to turn over the documents to Oracle without the information removed, but a judge denied it.
Meanwhile, the state's case accusing Oracle of fraud, racketeering and shoddy workmanship continues in state court.
Oracle defends the quality of its programming and instead blames state mismanagement for the website's problems -- especially the state's failure to hire another company to oversee Oracle's work.
-- Nick Budnick
nbudnick@oregonian.com
503-294-5083
@nickbudnick