Of course, tho whole situation is a little shocking so maybe all bets are off.
"Mr. Altman’s departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities."
And presumably this is why they used the "not consistently candid" weasel-wording. For that to be true, they only need to point to one material action that he didn't inform the board about (perhaps his chip startup, or Developer Day, or API access), and then point to the board meeting minutes, and then say "See, it's true. You did not inform us, the board, about these other actions you have taken, they matter to OpenAI's adherence to its mission, and therefore your inaction hindered our ability to exercise our responsibilities."
Everything else in the statement appears to be completely factual. It's a bad statement because it unnecessarily burns bridges and implies potential wrongdoing (because every other executive departure statement is so tame), but it didn't, strictly speaking, say anything untrue.
https://openai.com/blog/openai-announces-leadership-transiti...
I agree that in a casual context, this would be mild, but we're talking about professional press releases and judges acting oblivious to this context is not a good thing in my book.
they get it because the other party is afraid of the consequences if they don't get it.
Libel isn't really an issue here, because the statement from the board hardly made any factual assertions in the first place:
> Mr. Altman’s departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities. The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI.
There are a ton of possible interpretations of "he was not consistently candid".
However, there are lots of things that people can sue for besides outright libel/slander. I made the argument elsewhere that the legal nitpicking here isn't really that significant, because it's pretty easy to argue that the tenor of the board announcement would at least make it sound to a reasonable observer that Altman did something egregious.