Chapter 131: The Legal Committee
The board created a second independent committee the morning after Celeste's voice entered the record.
The first special committee remained responsible for transaction, archive, and safety controls. The new legal committee had a narrower task: examine Nathan's disclosures, certifications, signatures, and custody of factual records.
It did not report to Conrad.
It did not report to Celeste.
Neither could select its lawyers, direct its questions, or review witness material before the committee authorized access.
The charter also barred the legal committee from deciding scientific safety or the Northstar deal. It could refer facts to the existing special committee, regulators, or professional authorities, but it could not quietly expand its own jurisdiction. Every referral required a written scope statement.
I voted for the charter, then disclosed my history with Nathan and abstained from choosing the committee members. Three directors without prior involvement accepted the assignment. They retained outside counsel who had never represented Sterling, the Trust, Mercer, or anyone in my family.
Nathan remained Chief Legal Officer.
He remained engaged to Celeste.
The charter did not suspend, remove, or promise protection to him.
It preserved his access only long enough to collect records under supervision. Independent counsel, not Nathan, would decide which Sterling Legal personnel supported the search. His ordinary CLO duties continued outside the review.
It required one immediate action.
Nathan had to list every factual document he personally received, approved, signed, preserved, or transferred in connection with my removal, the old incident, later investor statements, and the Northstar warranty.
"Factual document needs a definition," Nathan said.
Committee counsel gave him one.
Reports, forms, schedules, certificates, routing records, factual memoranda, attachments, and evidence-preservation logs. Legal advice could be identified on a privilege log without disclosing its substance.
"You are asking the company's lawyer to describe privileged work," Celeste's counsel objected.
"We are asking an individual witness to identify dates, custodians, actions, and factual records," the chair replied. "Privilege claims will be reviewed independently."
Conrad requested permission to address the committee as chairman.
The charter allowed him to submit facts through counsel. It did not let him chair the session.
For the first time, he sat in the witness row.
Nathan received a four-column form.
RECEIVED.
APPROVED.
SIGNED.
PRESERVED.
He could add an explanation column, but he could not replace his own name with Legal Department.
"Some records were handled by teams," he said.
"Then list the team record and your personal action separately," committee counsel answered.
I listened from my ordinary board seat. The committee did not give me Nathan's worksheet. My conflict rules allowed me to receive findings and authorized exhibits, not raw witness preparation.
That protected the process from me as much as from Celeste.
Nathan asked whether cooperation would preserve his contingent shares.
"No benefit is being offered," the chair said.
"Will it protect my position?"
"The committee is not deciding employment today."
His lawyer asked for seven days.
The committee gave him five and issued preservation notices to Sterling Facilities, Legal, the external archive, and Northstar's independent investigators. No one could measure his list only against records he controlled.
Each custodian had to preserve original metadata and provide a separate inventory. Nathan could identify documents, but he could not collect, rename, or export them by himself. The committee also prohibited anyone from changing his employment or contingent-benefit records without notice while the inventory was underway. That protection preserved evidence; it did not grant immunity.
Celeste remained silent until the meeting ended.
Then she told Nathan, within hearing of three directors, "Be accurate about what was yours."
The sentence could have meant support.
It could also have meant isolation.
The committee preserved it as part of the current meeting record without treating it as evidence of the old events.
No part of the worksheet would be public before privilege review and redaction. Patient information, technical detail, and unrelated advice stayed outside the board release.
Nathan picked up the blank worksheet.
For five years, he had hidden inside a department name.
Now an independent committee wanted every fact that passed through his own hands.