HP enterprise business head Ann Livermore at one point proposed several business commitments to be included in the settlement agreement when she and Catz spoke in the wake of Hurd's hiring in September 2010, Catz said. Among those was Oracle agreeing to continue porting its software to Itanium, a chip platform that is predominantly used by HP.

"I told her this was totally out of place in this agreement ... and that we were not going to do that, period," Catz told Judge James Kleinberg of the Santa Clara County Superior Court in San Jose, California.

Just days after HP fired Hurd as its CEO, Oracle hired him as co-president. HP promptly sued Hurd to stop him from misusing confidential information.

"I was shocked, actually. I was really, really surprised" when HP filed the suit, Catz said on Tuesday. She saw the filing as a suit against Oracle as well as Hurd.

Almost as soon as the suit was filed, the companies were trying to patch up the rift in their relationship, which represents billions of dollars in revenue and tens of thousands of joint customers. Adding to the urgency, Catz said, was the fact that HP had purchased a keynote address at the upcoming 2010 Oracle OpenWorld conference, to be delivered by Livermore with an introduction by Catz.