"By Nov. 29, L.& H. had plunged into bankruptcy. Indictments and convictions followed. L.& H.’s stock price sank to zero — and the Bakers lost everything. "
"Dragon Systems, the Bakers’ “third child,” was put up for sale at a bankruptcy auction. Visteon acquired some of Dragon’s technology. ScanSoft bought the bulk of it and went on to become a $7 billion giant, with a licensing deal with Apple. (The Bakers believe that some of their technology made its way into Siri.) ScanSoft later acquired — and assumed the name of — Nuance, another voice technology company."
"Indeed, Nuance had gone public about the same time L.& H. bought Dragon, and Goldman handled the initial offering — a fact that still angers the Bakers. They say they had no idea Goldman was simultaneously representing their company and a rival."
"It wasn’t until after the bankruptcy auction, the Bakers now say, that the full force of what had happened hit them. The money was one thing. But what they really wanted was the opportunity to complete the work they had started decades earlier."
“The door is closed,” Mr. Baker remembers thinking. “Not only do we not have the technology any more, but we have no chance of getting it back.”
THE Bakers’ case against Goldman is simple. Their lawyer, Alan K. Cotler of Philadelphia, captured it in a single sentence in a motion for summary judgment: “The Goldman Four were unsupervised, inexperienced, incompetent and lazy investment bankers who were put on a transaction that in the scheme of things was small potatoes for Goldman.”
