Thread by @doratki

It’s 7:30 and I’m outside the courthouse for day 4 of US v Elizabeth Holmes. The line outside isn’t so bad this morning - mostly tv press and random spectators. A lady behind me says she had work off today so decided to come watch. The case is “big for Silicon Valley,” she says.

The lady behind me is a software engineer who began following Theranos after learning about it in an undergrad ethics class. She later took a class on launching startups at Stanford and the prof said investors want to see profit w/in a year. That mentality is bad, she says.

Judge Edward Davila is back on the bench. He'll hear arguments on Holmes' request to limit ex-Theranos team manager Surekha Gangakhedkar's testimony before bringing in the jury this morning.

Judge Davila says some of Holmes' objections to Gangakhedkar's testimony "need to be developed on the record" before he can rule. Holmes' attorney replies that he'll defer to the court, but "we were hopeful to get the temperature of the court" and streamline the issues.

Judge Davila asks whether the gov't plans to mention Ian Gibbons' suicide and the circumstances surrounding it. A prosecutor replies that the fact he died may be mentioned, but they won't 'dwell' on his death or the cause. "We don’t intend to go there," he says.

Holmes' counsel says he's concerned the gov't will mention Gangakhedkar's immunity deal to wrongfully suggest she and others at Theranos committed crimes. A prosecutor says he won't make that suggestion, and the judge notes that immunity deals aren't uncommon in criminal trials.

Erika Cheung is back on the stand to wrap up her cross-examination and any rebuttal qs, before Gangakhedkar is expected to testify. Holmes' counsel begins by asking her about Theranos' lab database and software.

Holmes' counsel Lance Wade asks Cheung if she can recall how many patient tests were conducted monthly on the Edison when it was launched in Walgreens in late 2013. She repeatedly replies she doesn't know. "I understand, it’s a specific question from a long time ago," he says.

Wade points to a standard-operating-procedure "corrective" policy document that Theranos had explaining what to do in the case tests had errors. "I have never seen this document," Cheung says.

Wade brings up the David Boies letter Cheung received in July 2015. She says she began talking with then-WSJ reporter John Carreyrou about Theranos in May 2015, and after she received two calls from Theranos' HR head, which she didn't return, before she got the letter from Boies.

Wade shows Cheung emails b/w Tyler Shultz and Holmes. Shultz asked Holmes to meet in person and Holmes replied that she was tied up, but she asked Shultz to email her to be sure everything 'gets addressed.' That prompted Shultz's long email. (Feds left the exchange out on direct)

Wade points to a patent authored by Theranos engineers on "Devices methods and systems for reducing sample volume." He asks Cheung about the patent claims, but she says it was after her time at Theranos and she doesn't know specifics about patents. Wade moves on.

Wade wraps Cheung's cross-examination showing her some more Theranos policy documents, which she says she's never seen. John Bostic is now up for the gov't on redirect.

Bostic asks Cheung how many tests out of the hundreds of tests offered by Theranos could be done on the Edison w/ blood from a fingerstick prick. She replies only 4-9 tests could be done on the Edison.

Cheung says she started having concerns about Theranos' blood tests after a month working there and there were problems with machine performance. "We had people sleeping in their car because it was taking too long... we had to perform these samples over and over and over."

Cheung on Theranos' policies and the Edison blood test devices: "Just because they’re less expensive doesn’t mean you should give people false information about their health status... It shouldn’t be the case [that] because you pay less, you get a less quality result."

Cheung's examination wraps w/ her saying she didn't answer the calls from Theranos' HR head Mona Ramamurthy b/c "when I heard Mona’s voice and heard how scared she was" Cheung said she remembered how scared she felt while working at Theranos.

Cheung: "I just felt I didn’t have to. It wasn’t my responsibility to pick up the phone and talk to these people -- that it was my responsibility not to speak to them." With that, Cheung's examination is over w/o re-cross. Ex-Theranos team manager Surekha Gangakhedkar is up next.

Gangakhedkar begins by recalling that she started working at Theranos in 2005 and was eventually promoted to assay systems team manager. She eventually resigned in Aug 2013, over her concerns with the Edison devices. "I was not aligned with some of those decisions," she says.

Gangakhedkar says GSK evaluated certain Theranos tests in 2008, but she would not have said GSK "comprehensively validated the technology," b/c "this was just a single study." We're taking a break, and will be back in ~45.

Courtroom trial break banter among certain counsel/court staff is about how grateful everybody is that this isn't a patent case. (for real)

We're back, Gangakhedkar is on the stand, testifying about her frustrations with Theranos' policy of "siloing" information and prohibiting teams from sharing their project info w/ others at the company. The policy "came from either Ms. Holmes or Mr. Balwani," she said.

A prosecutor is pointing to a series of emails in 2013 in which Gangakhedkar expressed concerns about problems with an assay test, and Holmes replied to one email asking another manager to “please comment on your root cause of these issues.”

In another email from July 2013, Holmes wrote Balwani, Gangakhedkar and others that running a demo of certain assay tests using the Edison 4.0 was their highest priority that week.

Gangakhedkar says in August 2013, she didn't think Theranos' Edison 3.0 and 3.5 were ready to be used for patient testing, b/c they were aware that they had reliability and "at that time they weren’t fully resolved."

Gangakhedkar says she thinks Elizabeth Holmes was pressuring her team to validate Theranos' tests on Edison devices and that their validation was rushed.

Gangakhedkar says she asked Sharada Sivaraman to email Holmes reiterating the reliability problems with Edison 3.0s in 2013, b/c they were having the same problems w/ the device they were launching. In a one-line sentence, Sivaraman emailed Holmes the data, but didn't elaborate.

Gangakhedkar said she also emailed Daniel Young and Holmes that there was missing data from Edison 3.5 tests. Young replied to the email that it was b/c the "wrong cartridges were used." But he was "misrepresenting the truth," and shortly after she resigned, Gangakhedkar says.

Days after receiving an email from Balwani pressuring her team to work harder, Gangakhedkar quit: “I was very stressed and unhappy and concerned with the way the launch was going. I was not comfortable with the plan that they had in place, and so I made a decision to resign."

Gangakhedkar said she gave Holmes her resignation and told her concerns about the Edison given that they "continued to have issues." Gangakhedkar said Holmes told her Holmes promised to deliver to customers and "she didn’t have much of a choice, but to go ahead with the launch."

Gangakhedkar said Holmes told her that they would use venous blood draws for some tests, but Gangakhedkar said "I felt that it was not the right thing to do." She resigned, and others on her team quit as well.

Gangakhedkar: "It seemed like a huge let down from all the hard work that was collected. It felt that my effort and efforts from my team members going to waste. We’re now launching -- no matter what with the 3.0s -- all in all it was a difficult situation."

Before leaving Theranos, Gangakhedkar admits she took Theranos' internal documents to protect herself. "I was worried about the launch. I was scared that things would not go well," and she would be blamed. Direct wrapped - on cross now.

On cross, Holmes' atty tries to get Gangakhedkar to concede that when she quit, the tests didn't involve patient samples. She says she doesn't recall but the tests weren't CLIA validated when she quit. The atty points out they were validated later, but she says she doesn't know.

Holmes' attorney Lance Wade points out that the GSK study promoted Gangakhedkar's work at Theranos, and "that’s a big deal, isn’t it?" "I think, so yes," she replies.

We're breaking for the day (and week!) Side note: Lance Wade has been the only defense attorney who's examined witnesses so far. He also gave Holmes' opening statement. I assume at some point Kevin Downey, Amy Saharia or other defense attys will step in, but hasn't happened yet.