Theranos served papers on Richard Fuisz in October 2011 as part of a lawsuit accusing him and his sons of conspiring to steal the company’s patent information for their own use. Fuisz wasn’t worried: He had simply figured out what would be needed to make their readers work, filed first, and now held the rights to technology contained in the Theranos blood readers. His opponent in court, however, would be David Boies, the attorney who had managed the US Justice Department’s successful antitrust suit against Microsoft, represented Al Gore’s appeal before the Supreme Court contesting the 2000 presidential election, and helped overturn California’s law against gay marriage. Boies and his firm, Boies Schiller, could be ruthless: Already he had put the Fuisz family under surveillance.

Chief among the allegations was that Fuisz’s son John, an attorney, had accessed Theranos files on his father’s behalf. This wasn’t true, and Fuisz and his law firm sent exculpatory evidence to Boies and Theranos, but they brushed it off. Elizabeth and Sunny feared Fuisz was conspiring with one of their major competitors, especially Quest Diagnostics or LabCorp, but Fuisz was on his own. As the case moved forward, costs rose.