MedWhat's request to replace a judge hearing the case against Stanford-StartX Fund has been refused and the company has been ordered to pay costs for blocking discovery.

The bitter legal feud between Stanford-StartX Fund and virtual medical assistant developer MedWhat has taken another twist after the latter demanded the withdrawal of a judge hearing the case, Analytics Insight reported yesterday. The court reportedly refused a motion from Arturo Devesa, CEO of MedWhat, demanding it should remove its part-time pro tem assistant, Jeff Wohl, owing to alleged conflicts of interest with the university. Instead, head judge Ethan Schulman apparently opted to enforce Wohl’s “motion to compel” order on Devesa, ordering the latter to pay Stanford-StartX Fund $11,000 in legal fees for preventing MedWhat from responding to what is known as a discovery request – a mechanism enabling the other side to glean information for its case. MedWhat had sought to block the motion-to-compel order by arguing Wohl was prejudiced as an employee of private equity law firm Paul Hastings, which has allegedly had financial dealings with the Stanford board of trustees. Among other allegations, MedWhat claimed Paul Hastings had financial relationships with Debra Zumwalt, general counsel of Stanford University, as well as with Robert Wallace, chief executive of the university’s endowment, Stanford Management Company. Paul Hastings was also meant to have dealt with Stanford University’s attorney in the case, Bahram Seyedin-Noor. The firm’s Silicon Valley branch is allegedly based at the Stanford University research park, while its chairman, Thomas Wisialowski, an alumnus of Stanford University, supposedly remains on the advisory forum of the university’s centre for the legal profession. MedWhat’s action also cited as reasons for Wohl’s dismissal Paul Hastings’ alleged financial interest in the university and its advisory contacts with VC firms that have cooperated with Stanford-StartX Fund previously. The company filed a countersuit in June 2018 accusing Stanford University, Stanford-StartX Fund and others in its investment consortium of legal violations including breach-of-contract, securities fraud and infringement of intellectual property. MedWhat had participated in the 2013 StartX accelerator before raising $560,000 in seed funding the following year from Stanford-StartX Fund, Stanford Hospital, Startcaps Ventures and assorted angel investors. The fund subsequently provided undisclosed follow-on sums to MedWhat in 2015 and 2017, with regulatory filings stating MedWhat collected at least $2.6m in equity in the latter year.

Subscribe to go deeper

GCV subscribers get access to all our proprietary data and deep-dive articles, as well as the global directory of CVC investors.



Not sure if you have a subscription?