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Spectrum also contends that Sculley's Monday- morning phone call to ensure + that the restatement of earnings was released came five minutes before he announced his resignation. It was not, the company says, a final act of fiduciary duty, as Sculley claims, but a maneuver to protect himself by covering a potentially negative market reaction to his departure with an equally depressing earnings report. In record trading volume Monday, Spectrum's stock lost more than half of its value -- dropping from 5 9/16 to 2 1/4. At week's end the company's shares, once as high as 13 1/8, were trading at 3 3/8.
Sculley's lawyer responded to the Spectrum suit by accusing Caserta of "combining shreds of facts with wild, unsubstantiated theories to arrive at the version of events he desperately wants the world to believe." Sculley claims to have investigated the company thoroughly before signing, but his suit suggests otherwise. Though rumors of an SEC investigation had been swirling since May, Sculley says he took Caserta at his word that there were no outstanding "problems" at the company. Also slipping through Sculley's inquiries were the aggressive accounting measures he lists among his reasons for leaving. The same procedures were included in a quarterly report filed before he joined the company. Sounding oddly like one of Sculley's detractors at Apple, his spokesman conceded, "He paid more attention to the patents and technology than the financial stability of the company."
As in most divorces, the courts will take months to sort out who did what to whom. Meanwhile, Sculley did manage to make an appearance Thursday at Vice President Al Gore's panel on the information highway. When it came time to introduce himself, he said, "I'm John Sculley, and I don't work for anybody." Given his recent troubles, that might just become a permanent answer.