Document drama slows down Aaron Rossi civil suits

PEORIA (25 News Now) - It sounds like the start of a bad joke, what do you get when 19 lawyers and several lawsuits collide? The latest piece of the ongoing legal drama with former Reditus Labs CEO Aaron Rossi.

Former co-owners and investors of the now-dead Reditus Laboratory argue Rossi froze them out of the company and collected profits from millions in COVID-19 testing contracts for himself. Now they want a cut of the profits they feel he denied them.

Far before any decision can come on that, there is continued argument over emails between Rossi and his lawyer, Michael Evans. A judge ruled Rossi’s communication with Evans isn’t protected under attorney-client privilege because Evans was also legal counsel for Reditus. That should open up those emails to all parties, but attorneys against Rossi said they haven’t received the documents.

After an intense back and forth, Judge Stephen Couri ruled Evan’s attorney will have three weeks to speak with her client and send along those documents. Reditus’ attorney has two weeks to provide those emails.

Reditus’ attorney believes a system should be set up to allow the parties to only view those emails, and not be able to disseminate them, something attorneys took offense to as calling their ethics into question.

Ahead of the next hearing, a decision hangs in the balance on whether financial information for Reditus and Rossi will remain under a court-ordered seal protecting those documents from public viewing. The seal was originally agreed upon by both parties, in order to protect the trade secrets of Reditus.

However, representatives for former investors of Reditus believe it’s no longer needed.

“There are no more trade secrets,” Davie & Associates Dermatopathology attorney Pete Lubin said. “The company is out of business.”

Couri said he’ll review that for the next hearing, which is slated for early February. He’s looking to get these lawsuits moving, some of them three years old.

“Let’s find out what’s not being disclosed, if anything,” Couri said of the documents. “I know we’re starting to move on it now, we’ll get through the documents.”

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