Everett Asked a Judge to Give Him My Cultures

The first thing I asked Mara was whether I had to bring the master tubes to court.

"No," she said. "Bring your records."

That answer helped me sleep.

We had four days before the hearing in Lane County. Mara filed my sworn statement, the full equipment sale, the culture-use agreement, and Everett's removal notice. She attached rent receipts showing that I had paid for the bank before and during our partnership.

I checked every exhibit number against her list.

On the morning of the hearing, I wore my good gray cardigan. Rain had darkened the shoulders before I reached the courthouse doors. Everett stood inside with a lawyer I had never met.

He looked at my green binder.

"You could still make this easy."

"We have a hearing," I said.

Inside, the company's lawyer argued that the business could not fill its orders without access to the cultures. Everett had told him that my bank had been part of the purchase, despite the separate pages.

The lawyer held up the equipment bill.

"The purchaser paid thirty-eight thousand dollars for an operating laboratory."

Mara rose.

"The attached schedule names the excluded assets. It's in our second exhibit."

The judge turned a page.

I watched her finger move down the list. Master cultures. Private bank. Original transfer ledger. Each item had a small initial beside it.

"Is this your signature?" she asked Everett when he took the witness stand.

"Yes, but our understanding changed as the business grew."

"Was there a later signed assignment?"

"We talked about it."

"Was there a later signed assignment?"

"No."

The room was very quiet. I could hear water dripping from someone's umbrella into a plastic stand.

Mara asked Everett about my removal.

"You exercised the right to remove Ms. Wozniak from management under the operating agreement?"

"Yes."

"And changed the incubation room locks?"

"For security."

"Before sending this notice?"

"That morning."

She put the license clause in front of him. He read it without moving his lips.

His lawyer argued that my forty-percent ownership meant I had not really left the partnership. Mara pointed to its definition of production partnership: my agreed management role and access, separate from my company shares.

That wording had cost me $600 in legal review eighteen months earlier.

I had resented the bill then.

When I took the stand, Mara asked why I kept the masters elsewhere.

"A heater can fail," I said. "A room can get dirty. I needed a clean source to start again."

"Were they kept elsewhere to stop this company from operating?"

"They were there before the company existed."

Everett's lawyer asked if another supplier could sell the business oyster spawn.

"Of course," I said. "It would need to be sold under its own name."

I kept my answers short. I knew the dates. I did not know what Everett had told his lawyer in private.

The judge denied the request for emergency access. She said the record before her did not support forcing me to hand over privately held cultures. She also made clear that this hearing did not decide every claim in the case.

I let out a breath so slowly that it made my chest ache.

There was no speech about justice. The clerk took notes. The lawyers discussed the written order.

With both sides' agreement, it also required preservation of the company records and the disputed inventory. Unused culture copies would stay sealed in June's custody while the lawyers worked out their return. Nothing in that arrangement granted a new production license.

Everett's lawyer asked about the customer complaints.

"Those are being independently reviewed," Mara said. "We are not asking the court to decide them today."

Outside the courtroom, Ruth waited near a bench.

"He authorized the filing without giving us your full contract," she told me.

"You have it now."

"I should have asked before I voted."

I looked at her for a moment.

"Yes."

She did not argue.

Ruth handed Mara notice of a formal company meeting to review Everett's management. Under the operating agreement, she could call it, but the required notice period still had to run.

"I'm asking for your vote," she said.

"Send me the proposed action and the accounts. I'll read both."

I had followed a bright smile into one business arrangement. I was willing to read my way into the next decision.

At home, I checked my bank cabinet. The alarm light was green. Small tubes rested behind their numbered rows, asking nothing about my court clothes.

I entered the temperature and the time.

Then I finally cried. Not for long. Long enough that I had to take off my glasses.

My phone chimed while I was washing my face.

The company bookkeeper had sent Mara and Ellis an email and copied me. She had found a separate file of customer credits that never reached the accounts.

One attachment showed an instruction from Everett.

Do not post these. Use the higher harvest figures and close the claims.