Anthony Levandowski Faces New Claims of Stealing
wired.com
wired.com
This sounds a lot like she was spying on him for trade secrets. Also, the BDSM gear is completely irrelevant to anything.
He has too much at stake for her to take the stand and be questioned.
I mean, if we're just going by Wikipedia, my non-lawyerly brain would parse this:
> It is coercion involving threats to reveal substantially true [...] information about a person to the public, a family member, or associates, or threats of [...] criminal prosecution.
as being precisely what's happening here. Breadcrumbs were thrown out in public with an implication to settle in order to avoid more getting out.
That sounds like "legal blackmail" to most laypeople.
Time will tell. Most likely, they'll settle for much less than $6 million.
Without access to the actual complaint, there's little basis for the first sentence and none for the second.
If you’d like to provide a link, that would actually contribute a lot to the discussion. Suggesting that it's out there somewhere does not.
Without being a news reporter myself, I must rely on what is reported to me. While I know that the news media will give it their own biased slant, certain things, like her saying that she has the license plate numbers of those visiting his house, or that he has BDSM gear, I believe I can take as objectively factual.
Would you also say that without access to a rocket ship or the personal ability to do advanced astrological calculations that there is no basis to the statement that the earth is round?
I'm saying that there is no basis that has been cited for the specific characterizations made in the comment I first responded to upthread, correct.
> The basis is the legal complaint, which is publicly accessible.
Your post in which you made the characterization quoted text from the news article, not the complaint. If you actually have read the complaint and were characterizing the material in it after reading it in context, that was a very poor presentation.
> While I know that the news media will give it their own biased slant, certain things, like her saying that she has the license plate numbers of those visiting his house, or that he has BDSM gear, I believe I can take as objectively factual.
Perhaps, but the characterization of their relevance to the legal causes of action at the center of the case would require knowing, for instance, the details of the alleged manner of intentional infliction of emotional distress and whether or not the arsenal of BDSM equipment was integral to that. Which you could not get from the news article at the head of the thread; you could, presumably, from the complaint, but I see no evidence that you have seen it.
But, in any case, even ignoring that, the analogy was inapt.
Only if we presume that HN's fascination with Waymo vs Uber and the man at the centre of it all serves as something other than a tech world surrogate for lurid celebrity gossip.
Sums up the level of horseplay when they examined the power relationships involving contractual bondages offered by a competing corporate interest through the submission to a liquid asset.
I knew Anthony some years ago. It was clear to me from day one that not all was right with his way of interacting with the world.
I suppose his nanny apparently had enough emotional intelligence to pick up on this and enough situational awareness to take notes.
I wish there were a safe way to share this, especially if it turned out to be useful in any way beyond schadenfreude.
This Uber-Waymo affair has devolved into absolute tabloid-level nonsense and we should all collectively be ashamed of it.
Levandowski made it clear on more than one occasion of his admiration of some explicitly sociopathic tendencies. More than a few people noticed and talked about it. I'm not sure anyone did anything -- except, perhaps, his nanny apparently.
There's a bigger conversation in there I'd like to have, but I haven't sorted it out in my own mind, and I'm sweating even writing this much.
Obviously, this is a tactic that Wong's lawyers (and her) are using to get Levandowski to settle quickly. If he settles I'd bet there will be a gag clause attached.
There's a lesson here: if you involved in shading dealings, be discreet.
Wong - My employee isn't paying me correctly. I better start collecting private information about him and his colleagues, without his knowledge, to use in a future lawsuit.
Also keep in mind the data she is collecting has nothing to do with her complaints about wage etc.
Levandowski didn't purchase her ears, memory, and voice. Just her labor for some relatively low wage however many hours per week.
I'm sure in the end he'll purchase them, but at a much steeper cost than if he had just paid for them up front.
Imagine this is a typical company/employee relationship. Your boss isn't paying you correctly, instead of bringing it up with him (or HR, or state labor group) and resolving it you begin to collect information that is unrelated to your issue at hand (pay). You notice that your boss is selling trade secrets and paying off competitors. Instead of telling someone (at Waymo, Uber, Telsa, the police etc), you continue to collect information about your boss, including his sex toys in his closet and use that information against him to resolve your unrelated HR complaint. This would not go over well in a traditional employee relationship, let alone a nanny type situation.
Maybe nothing is illegal there, but it's definitely unethical. I could be swayed on her tactics if the info she collected was things like "he also doesn't pay his gardener and housekeeper" but the fact that she hung around so that she could get the license plates of people showing up to his door is incredible unethical. It doesn't make what he did right, but she acted in a totally inappropriate manner.
I'll give you that, from the article, his sex toys seem irrelevant. However, if they're mentioned in the complaint, I suspect it might have something to do with a hostile work environment or sexual harassment. But that's just me speculating.
Wouldn't it be blackmail if she didn't go to the courts and tried to demand money in exchange for not reporting him to the court, which she is now doing?
Given this new information, how much more likely does this make that he will be arrested to prevent him fleeing?
It's a little late to do that, keep the info she has already revealed secret, and prevent her from being subpoenaed in the other cases to which it might be relevant.
Uber employee writes a letter making all sorts of damaging claims. He then settles for $4.5M. When made to testify, he "walked back some of the allegations in the letter".
Amazing. C'mon, she's heard you screaming on the phone to your lawyer. They know your last name. They can google you.
If I was working for this guy, and I observed the stuff that was going on, I would start talking to a lawyer too.
Also this guy sounds like the American Psycho guy of Tech.
But the nanny probably wouldn’t know it / wouldn’t have the guts / wouldn’t have the money to find out.
I do think Lewandowski is guilty but this seems weird.
While I don't doubt that Levandowski is capable of some of the things he is alleged to have done, and may have done some of the things alleged, the complaint bears strongly similarities to shakedown lawsuits, especially the statement about the BDSM gear. If she truly had factual support for the allegations she made in the lawsuit (i.e., selling chips overseas, fleeing to Canada to escape charges, etc.), she wouldn't need to include embarrassing details like the BDSM stuff. That's the kind of detail you only include to try to force a settlement before discovery/trial.
Given that it's a she said/he said over the phone, it's a trivial matter to match up phone records to prove whether these alleged calls took place. The third parties named in the lawsuit can be subpoenaed (but as non-parties can likely charge the plaintiff and/or defendants for their costs incurred in responding).
Somehow that Levandowski would doesn't surprise me very much.
Lesson learned: Don't be a shady asshole.
She is probably a very valuable witness. If some of the stuff she is saying is true. He is going to jail. Probably going to be broke too.
So, unless there is something worse that Levandowski would know she knows that would come out if the allegations in the lawsuit were litigated, this is not likely to be “blackmail as lawsuit”.
What is unbelievable is how bad this is suggests the rest is off the charts. Well I view this off the charts so the rest thermonuclear.