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Concealment Timeline Exhibit

EXHIBIT: CONCEALMENT TIMELINE — PAYMENT ALLOCATION REPORTS

Litman v. Goldberg, Index No. 524343/2025

NY Sup. Ct., Kings County — Hon. Brian L. Gotlieb, J.S.C.

Exhibit Reference: EX-CT-001 (Concealment Timeline) Companion Exhibits: - EX-CT-002: July 2025 Payment Allocation Report (recovered 4/7/2026) - EX-CT-003: Email Elimination Texts (7/18/2025 – 7/21/2025) - EX-CT-004: MaryJane Harper Report-Generation Schedule (Oct 2023 – Jul 2025) - EX-CT-005: Aaron Gould (Connell Foley) Q4 2025 Counsel-Only Production (1/23/2026)

Prepared: April 7, 2026 Purpose: Establish active concealment (not spoliation) of monthly Payment Allocation by Client Reports for use at the Goldberg deposition and MSJ Point III (Damages).


I. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

For 21 consecutive months (October 2023 – June 2025), Joshua B. Goldberg's office produced a monthly Payment Allocation by Client Report for Richard C. Litman as originating attorney, generated on the same monthly cadence by MaryJane Harper from the PCLaw/Soluno billing system. These reports were Litman's sole window into the firm's financial treatment of his originated clients.

That cadence stopped not because the reports stopped being generated, but because Goldberg stopped delivering them. The recovered July 2025 report — generated 8/11/2025 but withheld from Litman until 4/7/2026 (an 8-month, 27-day delay) — proves the practice. The reports exist. The billing system functions. The reports are being concealed.

This exhibit charts each report's generation date vs. provision date to demonstrate a four-stage pattern:

Contemporaneous → Delays Begin → Outright Concealment → Counsel-Only Summaries

The legal theory is active concealment, not spoliation. Concealment requires no inference: the documents exist, dated, in Goldberg's possession, and were withheld for litigation-strategic reasons after the email elimination of July 18, 2025.


II. CHRONOLOGICAL TIMELINE TABLE (33 MONTHS — JUL 2023 THROUGH MAR 2026)

# Month Report Generated? Generation Date Provided to Litman? Provision Date Delay (days) Status Source
1 Jul 2023 UNKNOWN (no standalone PDF) NO WITHHELD/NEVER GENERATED Spreadsheet only ($87,193)
2 Aug 2023 UNKNOWN (combined Aug–Sep15 line) NO WITHHELD/NEVER GENERATED Spreadsheet only
3 Sep 2023 UNKNOWN (split Sep16–30 line) NO WITHHELD/NEVER GENERATED Spreadsheet only
4 Oct 2023 YES ~11/13/2023 YES ~11/13/2023 ~13 PROVIDED 20231113_October Payment Allocation...pdf
5 Nov 2023 YES ~12/15/2023 YES ~12/15/2023 ~15 PROVIDED 20231215_November...pdf
6 Dec 2023 YES 12/29/2023 (updated 1/10/2024) YES 12/29/2023 ~29 PROVIDED (revised) 20231229_December...pdf
7 Jan 2024 YES 2/9/2024 YES 2/9/2024 ~9 PROVIDED 20240209_January...pdf
8 Feb 2024 YES 3/12/2024 YES 3/12/2024 ~12 PROVIDED 20240312_February...pdf
9 Mar 2024 YES 4/11/2024 YES 4/11/2024 ~11 PROVIDED 20240411_March...pdf
10 Apr 2024 YES 5/9/2024 YES 5/9/2024 ~9 PROVIDED 20240509_April...pdf
11 May 2024 YES 6/14/2024 YES 6/14/2024 ~14 PROVIDED 20240614_May...pdf
12 Jun 2024 YES 7/12/2024 YES 7/12/2024 ~12 PROVIDED 20240712_...June 2024.pdf
13 Jul 2024 YES 8/14/2024 YES 8/14/2024 ~14 PROVIDED 20240814_...July 2024.pdf
14 Aug 2024 YES 9/13/2024 YES 9/13/2024 ~13 PROVIDED 20240913_...August 2024.pdf
15 Sep 2024 YES 10/11/2024 YES 10/11/2024 ~11 PROVIDED 20241011_...September 2024.pdf
16 Oct 2024 YES 11/8/2024 YES 11/8/2024 ~8 PROVIDED 20241108_...October 2024.pdf
17 Nov 2024 YES 12/13/2024 YES 12/13/2024 ~13 PROVIDED 20241213_...November 2024.pdf
18 Dec 2024 YES 1/9/2025 YES 1/9/2025 ~9 PROVIDED 20250109_...Dec 2024.pdf
19 Jan 2025 YES 3/7/2025 YES 3/7/2025 ~35 PROVIDED (delay begins) 20250307_...Jan 2025.pdf
20 Feb 2025 YES 3/13/2025 YES 3/13/2025 ~13 PROVIDED 20250313_...Feb 2025.pdf
21 Mar 2025 YES 4/11/2025 YES 4/11/2025 ~11 PROVIDED 20250411_...March 2025.pdf
22 Apr 2025 YES 5/17/2025 YES 5/17/2025 ~17 PROVIDED 20250517_...April 2025.pdf
23 May 2025 YES 6/13/2025 (updated 6/17/2025) YES 6/13/2025 ~13 PROVIDED — $0 paid begins 20250613_...May 2025.pdf
24 Jun 2025 YES 7/2/2025 YES 7/2/2025 ~2 PROVIDED — LAST CONTEMPORANEOUS Payment Allocation...June 2025.pdf
25 Jul 2025 YES 8/11/2025 YES 4/7/2026 240 (≈ 8 mo) CONCEALED — RECOVERED EX-CT-002
26 Aug 2025 PRESUMED YES (~9/11/2025) ~9/11/2025 NO 209+ (ongoing) WITHHELD Counsel summary only
27 Sep 2025 PRESUMED YES (~10/11/2025) ~10/11/2025 NO 179+ (ongoing) WITHHELD Counsel summary only
28 Oct 2025 PRESUMED YES (~11/11/2025) ~11/11/2025 NO 148+ (ongoing) WITHHELD Q4 counsel summary (EX-CT-005)
29 Nov 2025 PRESUMED YES (~12/11/2025) ~12/11/2025 NO 118+ (ongoing) WITHHELD Q4 counsel summary
30 Dec 2025 PRESUMED YES (~1/11/2026) ~1/11/2026 NO 87+ (ongoing) WITHHELD Q4 counsel summary
31 Jan 2026 PRESUMED YES (~2/11/2026) ~2/11/2026 NO 56+ (ongoing) WITHHELD None
32 Feb 2026 PRESUMED YES (~3/11/2026) ~3/11/2026 NO 27+ (ongoing) WITHHELD None
33 Mar 2026 PRESUMED YES (~4/11/2026) ~4/11/2026 NO pending WITHHELD None

Legend: - PROVIDED — Report delivered to Litman in the ordinary course on the established monthly schedule. - DELAYED — Report delivered, but materially later than the established cadence. - WITHHELD — Report exists or presumptively exists in Goldberg's possession; never delivered to Litman. - CONCEALED — RECOVERED — Confirmed generated and confirmed withheld; later produced after extended delay. - WITHHELD/NEVER GENERATED — No standalone PDF in Litman's possession; existence in Goldberg's records uncertain.


III. PATTERN ANALYSIS

A. The Four Stages of Concealment

Stage 1 — Contemporaneous (Oct 2023 – Dec 2024). 15 consecutive monthly reports delivered an average of ~12.5 days after month-end. Cadence is unbroken. The system works exactly as the arbitration award required.

Stage 2 — Delays Begin (Jan 2025 – Jun 2025). 6 reports delivered, but with the first material slip (January 2025 report delayed ~35 days, more than 2.5x the prior average), and the first non-payment of an undisputed amount ($28,440 in May 2025; $20,936 presumed unpaid in June 2025). The June 2025 report — generated 7/2/2025 — is the LAST report ever delivered in the ordinary course.

Stage 3 — Outright Concealment (Jul 2025 – Sep 2025). Litigation is threatened June 26, 2025. Litman's email accounts are eliminated July 18, 2025 — one day after the explicit litigation threat. The July 2025 report is generated August 11, 2025 (24 days after the email cut). It is not delivered. The August and September 2025 reports follow the same monthly cadence and are likewise withheld.

Stage 4 — Counsel-Only Summaries (Oct 2025 – present). On January 23, 2026, Goldberg's outside counsel (Aaron Gould, Connell Foley LLP) produces a Q4 2025 summary spreadsheet — but no underlying monthly Payment Allocation reports. Six months of missing client-by-client detail is "replaced" by aggregate totals from the same source documents that are still being concealed.

B. Quantitative Pattern

Metric Value
Reports delivered contemporaneously (Stages 1–2) 21
Average delay during contemporaneous period ~12.5 days
Maximum delay during contemporaneous period (Jan 2025) ~35 days
Reports confirmed concealed and later recovered 1 (July 2025)
Recovered-report delay ~240 days (8 months, 27 days)
Reports presumptively generated and currently withheld 8 (Aug 2025 – Mar 2026)
Reports never generated as standalone PDFs 3 (Jul–Sep 2023)
Total months with no standalone monthly PDF in Litman's hands 11 of 33 (33%)

C. Dollars in Withheld / Concealed Reports

Per Goldberg's own counsel-produced summary figures (POST_MARCH_2023_ACCOUNTING_GAP.md):

Period Collected Fees 20% Owed to Litman
Jul 2025 (CONCEALED, recovered 4/7/2026) $31,958.55 $6,391.71
Aug 2025 (WITHHELD) $196,081.00 $39,216.20
Sep 2025 (WITHHELD) $350,385.47 $70,077.09
Oct 2025 (WITHHELD) $628,331.50 $125,666.30
Nov 2025 (WITHHELD) $328,710.98 $65,742.20
Dec 2025 (WITHHELD) $276,098.00 $55,219.60
Jan – Mar 2026 (WITHHELD, no figures produced) UNKNOWN UNKNOWN
Subtotal — Jul–Dec 2025 alone $1,811,565.50 $362,313.10

Plus the never-produced Jul–Sep 2023 standalone reports (spreadsheet-only): $1,726,719 in collected fees, $345,344 in 20% allocations.

Combined dollars sitting behind concealed or never-produced monthly reports: ≈ $3.54 million in collected fees, ≈ $707,657 in 20% owed to Litman — and that figure understates the true exposure because it excludes Jan–Mar 2026 (no figures produced at all) and treats Goldberg's self-reported numbers as accurate.

D. The Critical Inflection Point — June 26 to July 18, 2025

Date Event
6/24/2025 Litman: "no basis without my consent" to be listed on USPTO filings
6/26/2025 Litman: "That is the answer that gets you into litigation"
6/26/2025 Heba Carter (NGM in-house) sends formal notice of affiliation termination
6/28/2025 Litman reserves "all rights and remedies"
6/30/2025 Formal termination of Litman's affiliation
7/2/2025 Last contemporaneous Payment Allocation Report generated (June 2025) — LAST DELIVERY
~7/17/2025 Explicit litigation threat communicated
7/18/2025 Email accounts eliminated — one day after litigation threat
7/21/2025 Litman: "Any update on email accounts?" — no response
8/11/2025 July 2025 Payment Allocation Report generated by NGM — NOT DELIVERED
1/23/2026 Aaron Gould (Connell Foley) produces Q4 2025 counsel summary
4/7/2026 July 2025 report finally produced — 240 days after generation

The reporting blackout begins precisely at the litigation-threat / email-elimination inflection. This is not coincidence; it is a coordinated cutoff of every channel through which Litman could monitor commercial use of his name and the financial flows attached to it.


IV. LITIGATION ANALYSIS

A. Why This Is Active Concealment, Not Spoliation

Spoliation requires inference. The court must infer that documents existed, that they were lost or destroyed, and that the destruction was in bad faith or grossly negligent. See Voom HD Holdings LLC v. EchoStar Satellite L.L.C., 93 A.D.3d 33 (1st Dep't 2012).

Active concealment requires no such inference. The recovered July 2025 Payment Allocation Report (EX-CT-002) proves four undisputed facts:

  1. The report was generated. Date-stamped 8/11/2025, 24 days after the email cut.
  2. The billing system was operational. PCLaw/Soluno ran the same monthly batch as it had for the prior 21 months.
  3. The report was retained. It exists in Goldberg's possession in April 2026 — eight months later — exactly as it was generated.
  4. The report was deliberately withheld from Litman. Not destroyed. Not lost. Not "inadvertently misfiled." Withheld for nearly eight months, then produced only after extended pressure.

The same logic applies presumptively to the August 2025 through March 2026 reports. They sit on the same servers, generated by the same software, by the same staff, on the same monthly schedule. The only thing that changed was Goldberg's willingness to send them to Litman.

B. The Eight-Month Delay Precedent

The recovered July 2025 report establishes a named, dated, document-specific instance of concealment — not a theory. Every subsequent withheld monthly report can now be argued by direct analogy: "On July 31, 2025, the next month's billing cycle closed; on August 11, 2025, MaryJane Harper ran the standard monthly Payment Allocation report; that report sat in Goldberg's possession for 240 days. The same is true of the report MaryJane Harper ran on September 11, 2025. And October 11, 2025. And every month thereafter."

The deposition examination of Goldberg can proceed from a known anchor — the recovered July 2025 PDF — rather than from a hypothetical missing document.

C. Adverse Inference and Sanctions

The concealment supports relief at three escalating levels:

1. Mandatory Adverse Inference (CPLR 3126; Voom). The jury must be instructed that the withheld monthly reports — had they been produced — would have shown: - Continued client-level commercial exploitation of Litman's name across the gap period; - Collected fees materially higher than the counsel-summary figures Goldberg has volunteered; - Fee-credit allocations to Litman substantially larger than the 20% number (the recovered July 2025 report shows a Litman fee-credit of $40,768.39 — more than 6x the 20% figure); - Non-payment of amounts owed.

2. Issue Preclusion / Striking of Defenses. Goldberg's affirmative defense that all sums owed have been paid (Tenth Defense and related) should be struck for failure to produce the very documents that would prove or disprove it. Goldberg cannot simultaneously withhold the Payment Allocation reports and assert payment compliance based on summary figures derived from those same reports.

3. Monetary Sanctions and Cost-Shifting. The cost of the independent forensic accounting demanded in POST_MARCH_2023_ACCOUNTING_GAP.md should be imposed on Goldberg under CPLR 3126(2) and the court's inherent authority. The need for the audit is a direct consequence of his concealment.

D. Connection to the July 18, 2025 Email Elimination

The email elimination and the reporting blackout are two halves of a single course of conduct. The texts exchanged on 7/18/2025 and 7/21/2025 (EX-CT-003) establish that Goldberg was on actual notice that Litman could no longer receive email at litman@4patent.com or rlitman@nathlaw.com. The August 11, 2025 generation of the July 2025 report — and Goldberg's failure to deliver it through any alternative channel (postal mail, hand delivery, secure file share, counsel-to-counsel) — demonstrates that the withholding was a deliberate downstream consequence of the email cut, not an accident.

The September 2, 2025 OpenGov registration as "Joshua Goldberg litman@4patent.com" further proves that the email infrastructure was operational; only Litman's access had been severed. The concealment therefore did not arise from any technical incapacity. It arose from an intentional decision to use the email cut as a one-way valve: Goldberg could continue to operate as Litman; Litman could no longer see what Goldberg was doing.

E. Use at the Goldberg Deposition

The Concealment Timeline supplies a tightly scripted line of questioning:

  1. Confirm the cadence. "From October 2023 through June 2025, did your office produce a Payment Allocation by Client Report for Mr. Litman every month?"
  2. Confirm the system. "Were those reports generated by MaryJane Harper from PCLaw or Soluno?"
  3. Confirm post-July 2025 generation. "On August 11, 2025, did MaryJane Harper (or her successor) run the same monthly report for the period July 1 to July 31, 2025?" — Show recovered July 2025 PDF, EX-CT-002.
  4. Confirm authenticity. "Is this the report?"
  5. Establish the withholding. "When was this report sent to Mr. Litman?" — Answer: not until April 7, 2026.
  6. Establish the pattern. "Did your office run the same monthly report on September 11, 2025? October 11, 2025? November 11, 2025? December 11, 2025? January 11, 2026? February 11, 2026? March 11, 2026?"
  7. Establish concealment intent. "Were instructions given to anyone in your office not to send Payment Allocation reports to Mr. Litman after July 18, 2025? By whom? When? In writing?"
  8. Confront the OpenGov registration. "On September 2, 2025, you used litman@4patent.com to register for OpenGov procurement. The email account was operational. Why did you not use it — or any other channel — to deliver the July 2025 Payment Allocation report?"

F. Use at MSJ Point III (Damages)

MSJ Point III quantifies damages in the $6.1M – $77.9M range. The Concealment Timeline directly supports the upper bound by establishing:

  1. Litman's fee-credit allocation is substantially larger than the 20% figure. The recovered July 2025 report shows $40,768.39 in fee-credit allocation versus $6,391.71 in 20%. If this ratio holds across the concealed months, the true measure of the firm's economic dependence on Litman's name approaches an order of magnitude greater than the conservative 20% number.
  2. The burden of proving payment shifts to Goldberg. Under the adverse inference, every withheld monthly amount is presumed unpaid for damages-calculation purposes unless Goldberg produces wire records, check numbers, and bank confirmations.
  3. Punitive / exemplary damages are supported. Active concealment of contemporaneously generated business records — by a defendant who is also an attorney admitted to practice — establishes the willful, wanton, and malicious conduct standard for punitive damages under New York law.
  4. The court can defer summary judgment on damages amount and grant partial summary judgment on liability for non-payment, ordering an evidentiary hearing or referee on the quantum once the concealed reports are produced.

V. KEY TAKEAWAYS FOR COUNSEL

  1. The "gap" is not a gap. The reports exist. They were generated on schedule. They were withheld.
  2. One recovered document anchors the entire theory. The July 2025 PDF (EX-CT-002) is the proof of concept — every subsequent argument is by direct analogy.
  3. Concealment > Spoliation. No inference required. Direct evidence of withholding.
  4. The fee-credit number ($40,768.39 in a single month) is the new damages target. Multiplied across 9+ concealed months, this number alone supports a six-figure claim independent of the 20%.
  5. The pattern is binary and date-anchored. Stage 1 (contemporaneous) ends June 2025. Stage 3 (concealment) begins July 2025. The dividing line is the litigation threat and email elimination.
  6. The Q4 2025 counsel summary is not a substitute. It is derived from the same source documents that are still being concealed and should be treated as an admission of what those documents contain — not as compliance with the discovery obligation.

VI. SOURCES


Prepared April 7, 2026 for use in Litman v. Goldberg, Index No. 524343/2025 — Goldberg deposition preparation and MSJ Point III (Damages).