=20 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- This article was sent to you by someone who found it on SFGate. The original article can be found on SFGate.com here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=3D/c/a/2006/07/11/BUGSOJSQDR= 1.DTL --------------------------------------------------------------------- Tuesday, July 11, 2006 (SF Chronicle) Luxury jet lands in court/Formica forbidden on Googlers' plane, lawsuit rev= eals Verne Kopytoff, Chronicle Staff Writer When you're a Google billionaire, comfort is everything on your private Boeing 767. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the two co-founders behind the popular search engine, were so involved with the jet's design that they had a custom sofa set up at Google's Mountain View headquarters, to try out before it was installed on their former commercial airliner, according to a court deposition that emerged Monday. The sofa, actually a mock-up, was hauled into Google's offices last year so that Page and Brin "could sit on it, lay on it, and then have comments about it," according to Leslie Jennings, an aviation designer who was hired to oversee some of the plane's refurbishment. Despite the co-founders' busy schedules, they broke away from corporate meetings for a few minutes at a time to share their opinions about the sofa while Jennings took notes. Brin and Page's close involvement in the sofa's design is the latest in a string of revelations about their private jet, details of which have emerged as part of a lawsuit pitting the holding company that technically owns the plane on behalf of Google's co-founders against Jennings. Blue City Holdings LLC has accused Jennings of failing to do the remodeling he was hired to do. Whether that is true is up to the courts. Regardless, the Google jet mak= es the many Silicon Valley moguls who own Gulfstreams look poor by comparison. The plane, reportedly a former Qantas Airways airliner, has become a symbol of the co-founders' iconoclasm and boundless wealth achieved in the aftermath of Google's high-profile initial public offering in 2004. On Monday, attorneys for the holding company met with Santa Clara Superi= or Court Judge Joseph Huber to ask that Jennings be found in contempt of court for allegedly talking to a Wall Street Journal reporter about the plane, in violation of a prior order by the judge to stay quiet. The hearing on the matter was set for Aug. 7. Jennings has denied the accusations of failing to do the work and has sa= id that he is owed nearly $200,000. Last year, he filed a lien with the Federal Aviation Administration on the plane to recover the money. In his deposition, Jennings, from Mead, Okla., said that he was joined at the meeting last year with Google's co-founders by employees of the company handling the upholstery. Several months earlier, Jennings had met with Page and Brin, plus Eric Schmidt, Google's chief executive, in a conference room at Google headquarters to show several floor plan drawings for the plane showing where lounges, cabins and other items would be located. Jennings, who said he has 30 years' experience designing executive aircraft, including some owned by the Saudi royal family, worked on renovating the 767 in 2004. He was to have been paid $337,932 in three installments, according to a contract he signed the next year that included a confidentiality agreement. But almost immediately, Jennings said, he started to butt heads with Ken Ambrose, one of the principals behind Blue City, who, he said, requested designs for rooms in the plane that were too small and was, ultimately, responsible for unnecessary costs. At one point, Jennings said, Ambrose asked that Formica be used on cabinets at a cost of $738,000. Not only would the material be unacceptable to Google's co-founders, Jennings said, it was too expensive. After looking around, he said that he found wood veneer that cost less. In an article published in the Wall Street Journal last week, the plane = -- whose whereabouts are unknown -- was said to be equipped with private staterooms. Page and Brin at one point considered hanging hammocks in the plane and argued over whether Brin could have a "California king" size bed, the article said. The plane was originally intended to be secret, in keeping with the Goog= le co-founders' affinity for privacy. By putting the plane in the name of a limited liability company, Brin and Page hid the plane's ownership. In the case file, mentions of Brin and Page's involvement have been redacted in some spots, but left untouched in others. Some page are labeled "highly confidential," though they remain public. In filings Monday, Blue City accused Jennings of speaking to the media repeatedly. The holding company also provided an e-mail purportedly sent by Jennings to a Blue City attorney on Saturday, titled "Why did I talk to the press," in which he said, "I will not set quietly by and not get to tell my story." E-mail Verne Kopytoff at vkopytoff@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx --------------------= -------------------------------------------------- Copyright 2006 SF Chronicle