Team-Building or Torture? Court Will Decide.

Hudgens agreed that Christopherson was "an upbeat guy; everybody there likes him." But he added: "It is a big pressure cooker in there, I'll tell you." He said low performers were threatened with "the Cure Team" -- two weeks to improve or you're fired.

Late last May, the all-male sales team was having "a rough week." Christopherson called the men into the break room and announced, "We're going to do an exercise." He asked for a volunteer.

Hudgens raised his hand.

"Keep in mind," he said, "the last time we did a team-building exercise outside, we did an egg toss."

Prosper maintains that Christopherson explained what would happen next, and Hudgens knew what he was in for, even handing his cellphone and keys to co-workers before lying down. Hudgens insists he had no clue.

"So they held me down," Hudgens said, "and the next thing I know, Josh has a gallon jug of water and he's pouring it on my face. I can't scream because the water's going down my throat.

"And halfway through he stopped for a second. I tried to mumble the words, 'Stop, knock it off.' I tried to get that out and he continued to pour."

"I'm not getting any air," Hudgens said. "Toward the end, I'm starting to black out. I'm getting very dizzy, light-headed. The sensation that's going through my head is, 'I'm going to drown.' "

That is the oft-described whole point of waterboarding, though Hudgens said he was not then familiar with the word. He said that what he told a friend in the human relations office two hours later, after "coughing, choking, mucus" was: "My team just tried to kill me."

Only later, after describing the experience to a former employer, was he told: "You've just been waterboarded." "I said, 'What's waterboarding?' And the only difference was, instead of lying on a board, I was lying on a grassy hill."

Christopherson did not know the term, either, Brunt said: "He thought it had something to do with water skiing."

He said Christopherson told the executives that he was inspired by reading about the Greek philosopher Socrates, who is said to have once held a student's head under water, then told him he must want to learn as badly as he wanted air.