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Anthony Levandowski Faces New Claims of Stealing

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Re: Anthony Levandowski Faces New Claims of Stealing

#71

Post by giarc »

scarmig wrote: post #69
giarc wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are describing blackmail. 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.

So your claim is that if one person is employed by another, they're obligated to always act with their best interests at heart, even if the employer doesn't do the same for the employee? 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 u…

I think you are obligated to stop a crime that is being committed.

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.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Faces New Claims of Stealing

#72

Post by throwaway_4179 »

kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #63
throwaway_4179 wrote: post #27

Throwaway and being intentionally vague for obvious reasons. 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 b…

Sorry but I have a hard time considering your comment a meaningful contribution to the thread, since it is extremely common for people to #metoo with 20-20 hindsight about other people. The more lurid the details the stronger their conviction. This Uber-Waymo affair has devolved into absolute tabloid-level nonsense and we should all collectively be ashamed of it.

Fair comment.

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.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Faces New Claims of Stealing

#74

Post by pwaai »

Fricken wrote: post #44
cantrip wrote: post #3

"Wong also claims knowledge of a large swath of Levandowski’s personal and business dealings. She does so in great detail, including dozens of overheard names, the license-plate numbers of cars she observed at a Levandowski property, and an extensive list of the BDSM gear she claims he kept in his bedroom." This sounds a lot like she was spying on him for trade secrets. Also, the BDSM gear is completely irrelevant to…

>the BDSM gear is completely irrelevant to anything 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.

> the BDSM gear is completely irrelevant to anything

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.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Faces New Claims of Stealing

#75

Post by korzun »

dawhizkid wrote: post #4

I guess she didn't sign an NDA. Also this guy sounds like the American Psycho guy of Tech.

> Also this guy sounds like the American Psycho guy of Tech.

You can easily be the next 'American Psycho' if a trust fund kid decides to smear you. You can also be the 'thief' if a company that you worked for decides to throw you under the bus for liability reasons.

Careful.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Faces New Claims of Stealing

#76

Post by jimrandomh »

eganist wrote: post #68
vkou wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally speaking, when you sue someone, it's often in your best interests to give them an opportunity to settle, instead of going to trial. You often do this by listing all the awful shit about the other person that you're going to air at trial. We don't call that a 'Legal way to blackmail,' and neither is this.

> We don't call that a 'Legal way to blackmail,' and neither is this 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 wit…

The key words in that sentence are "criminal prosecution". This is a civil suit.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Faces New Claims of Stealing

#77

Post by gamblor956 »

jacksmith21006 wrote: post #47

Something is off here. Why is all of this "dirt" coming out in a nanny employment situation? Plus how in the world did she even know what all these conversations meant and why even remember them all? I do think Lewandowski is guilty but this seems weird.

Ford has already pointed out that some of her claims are verifiably false, specifically the allegation about Argo.AI, which she claims she overhead, but which didn't have that name at the time of the conversation.

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).

Re: Anthony Levandowski Faces New Claims of Stealing

#78

Post by gamblor956 »

samfisher83 wrote: post #45
crag wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will never reach a courtroom. He will settle long before that. He has too much at stake for her to take the stand and be questioned.

It might be too late for it at this point. Some of that information is pretty much saying he did some illegal things. A prosecutor could just subpoena her and she has to tell the truth or risk going to jail.

At this point, either all of the allegations she made about him are true or he has a very good defamation lawsuit against her. Whether or not the BDSM claim is true, he has an invasion of privacy claim he can pursue.

Time will tell. Most likely, they'll settle for much less than $6 million.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Faces New Claims of Stealing

#79

Post by dragonwriter »

cantrip wrote: post #46
dragonwriter wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's available in the sense that all federal court filings are available at a fee through PACER; it's not linked in the article, nor available anywhere I can readily find other than PACER or pay sites that charge more than PACER for documents plus a monthly fee. 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.

You're saying there's no basis for these claims. The basis is the legal complaint, which is publicly accessible. The whole reason the news media is reporting on this is because they now have access to a public legal filing. 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…

> You're saying there's no basis for these claims

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.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Faces New Claims of Stealing

#80

Post by beagle3 »

giarc wrote: post #60
roflc0ptic wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What ethical rule do you see that breaking?

You see crimes being committed and instead of calling the authorities, you continue to collect data (license plate numbers, phone calls, conversations).

It might have only become clear to her at a later point that it's actually criminal rather than just unethical - if she was able to tell from the beginning it is illegal, she would probably be a lawyer or a paralegal, rather than a nanny.
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