Tesla Wins Lawsuit Against Whistleblower Accused of Hacks (cnet.com) 14
An anonymous reader writes: The US District Court of Nevada awarded Tesla a win in its lawsuit against a former employee, filed two years ago. You may recall CEO Elon Musk referred to this incident in a previously leaked email calling on employees to be "extremely vigilant." Martin Tripp, who worked at the company's Nevada Gigafactory, was accused of hacking the automaker and supplying sensitive information to unnamed third parties. Reuters reported Friday the court ruled in Tesla's favor and dismissed Tripp's motion to file another reply to the court. Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but according to Reuters, the court will grant Tesla's motion to seal the case.
Tripp originally entered the spotlight two years ago after seeking whistleblower protections and accusing Tesla of "some really scary things." He told The Washington Post he was the individual who provided information to the media and accused Tesla of building Model 3 sedans with punctured batteries. Tesla, in turn, accused Tripp of making false claims to the media. Tripp also denied any allegations he hacked Tesla, saying, "I don't have the patience for coding." The automaker previously named Tripp as a disgruntled employee angry after not receiving a promotion and accused him of aiding the theft of confidential photos and videos documenting Tesla's manufacturing process.
Tripp originally entered the spotlight two years ago after seeking whistleblower protections and accusing Tesla of "some really scary things." He told The Washington Post he was the individual who provided information to the media and accused Tesla of building Model 3 sedans with punctured batteries. Tesla, in turn, accused Tripp of making false claims to the media. Tripp also denied any allegations he hacked Tesla, saying, "I don't have the patience for coding." The automaker previously named Tripp as a disgruntled employee angry after not receiving a promotion and accused him of aiding the theft of confidential photos and videos documenting Tesla's manufacturing process.
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I thought Elon was a megalomaniac.
Headline is wrong (Score:5, Informative)
Tesla did not "win" the lawsuit. They just advanced past the motions-to-dismiss stage.
The bad headline comes from TFA itself at cnet.com. (The rest of the article is not much better. You have to follow its link to the some real reporting [reuters.com] to learn what actually happened.) Disappointing.
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+1
I don't believe either side here, hopefully the court will get proper solid evidence if there is any.
The court determined... (Score:5, Insightful)
... that he wasn't a whistleblower. They dismissed his arguments that he was a whistleblower, and accepted Tesla's arguments that he was an angry employee out for money and revenge, who deliberately made knowingly-misleading MOS queries to try to make Tesla look bad, tried to get others to do the same (trying to entice them with promises of payoffs from anonymous third parties), and cover his tracks by making it look like they came from another employee, then decided to rebrand himself as a whistleblower when he got caught.
Yet for some reason, Slashdot and others still insist on calling him a "whistleblower". A court, after reviewing the evidence, literally just said he's not a whistleblower. They only ruled in his favour on one count, which is that they agree with him and not Tesla that he didn't do $165M worth of damages to the company. He is however on the hook for a couple hundred thousand dollars in direct expenses plus potentially punitive damages. We'll find more about this during the next phase.
It should also be pointed out that he does not have a federal whistleblower case, and hasn't had one for over a year. He initially had one, but his attorney (Stuart Meisner) decided to quit, and he hasn't been able to find a replacement attorney to take up the case since then. Given that federal whistleblower cases are lucrative business thanks to the False Claims Act (which awards 15-30% of damages to the whistleblower), attorneys are normally chomping at the bit to take on potential whistleblowers. Tripp can't find one. That should be even more telling.
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Point well made.
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Every time you troll this ventilator nonsense, you'll get the same fact check, no matter what variant of trolling you use. [slashdot.org]
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Every time you troll this ventilator nonsense, you'll get the same fact check, no matter what variant of trolling you use. [slashdot.org]