THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE
November 17, 2004 8:48 p.m.
The shareholder court case over Michael Ovitz's Disney severance package, now in its fourth week, has featured memorable testimony by witnesses, especially from Disney Chairman Michael Eisner and his onetime second-in-command, Michael Ovitz. A few of their comments are excerpted below:
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Michael Eisner
"Every day was managing Michael Ovitz. ...I did nothing else."
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Mr. Eisner said once he determined that Mr. Ovitz should leave Disney, Mr. Ovitz refused to give up his job, saying he was recommitting himself to the company: "It was extremely frustrating. He was just not absolutely listening to that message," Mr. Eisner said. "I explained why it wasn't going to work. I couldn't get his attention."
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Michael Eisner
"With the preface that I was between my angiogram and my bypass, and floating on morphine probably," Mr. Eisner said he at one point told his wife and a son that if anything were to happen to him, Disney should turn to either Mr. Ovitz or Barry Diller, Mr. Eisner's longtime mentor.
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"I had the most difficult year of my career ... [yet] I was still willing to let him have a respectable exit."
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Michael Ovitz
"I went into a partnership with a man I was a life partner with ... as a friend, and expected it to be a home run, and it was a nine-inning ballgame that was over in three innings," on his relationship with Michael Eisner. ...
When Mr. Eisner himself took the stand on Monday, he characterized their relationship somewhat differently: "Michael Ovitz had a lot of best friends. Michael Ovitz was a salesman, is a salesman." Noting that he didn't grow up or go to school with Mr. Ovitz, he added: "I was a good friend. I was a reasonable friend. I liked his wife. I was amused by him. ...He was one of my friends."
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"I was in daze...This was a very difficult couple of days for me. I have
no idea what went on. I was on autopilot," explaining why he didn't ask
the full board to consider his termination agreement when Mr. Eisner told him
a few weeks later that he was no longer welcome at Disney.
Michael Ovitz
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"I never thought in my wildest dreams that I'd feel safer among a bunch of reporters." -- outside the courtroom after a second day of cross-examination.
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"I wouldn't even use a phone to communicate that because I was petrified someone would overhear it," in reference to a possible deal that Mr. Ovitz said he was evaluating.
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"I was expecting, frankly, a really terrific reception." But Bollenbach "looked at me squarely in the eye and said, 'Hello, I'm not reporting to you.' " Then said: "I'm not either." "This is an interesting way to start my career at Disney. ..."My mind was spinning like a Univac trying to figure out" what to do. -- describing how he was welcomed at Disney by Sanford Litvack and Stephen Bollenbach, then the company's chief of corporate operations and chief financial officer, respectively.
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Mr. Ovitz said that he recognized he had a lot to learn in the job, telling Mr. Eisner: "I have never run a public company. I spent my entire life working for a private company. I said to him, 'I need a year of education. You have to teach me what to do.' "