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Anthony Levandowski ordered to pay $179M to Google

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201–210 of 246 posts

Re: Anthony Levandowski ordered to pay $179M to Google

#201
post #12

A friend of mine heard his personal attorney speak at a law school class. Even his attorney thought Anthony was a “jackass” for stealing the IP; his defense fell on him being an engineer who, at the end of the day, just wanted to build cool shit and wasn’t malicious.

His attorney should STFU about cases in progress to people who are not in any way involved in the suit. Levandowski may be a jackass but that lawyer is not much better.

Note that this is Levandowski's defence. "I did copy those files but only because I love tech, I would never deliberately steal IP, I'm really sorry about all this". What else could he do, he clearly copied the files so claiming he didn't wasn't going to work.

So his lawyer is just maintaining the same position that he did in court, otherwise this would be outrageous.

Re: Anthony Levandowski ordered to pay $179M to Google

#202
post #138

It feels perverse that when Uber's stolen technology killed a pedestrian, nobody was held liable and in fact no charges were pressed and no civil lawsuits were filed. But the person who stole that technology was indicted and is getting financially destroyed.

According to Wikipedia, the daughter and husband "quickly reached an undisclosed settlement" with Uber. Uber very likely paid out a large sum.

Sounds reasonable, Why doesn't Anthony Levandowski just do that?

Re: Anthony Levandowski ordered to pay $179M to Google

#203

It feels perverse that when Uber's stolen technology killed a pedestrian, nobody was held liable and in fact no charges were pressed and no civil lawsuits were filed. But the person who stole that technology was indicted and is getting financially destroyed.

>nobody was held liable and in fact no charges were pressed and no civil lawsuits were filed

As noted below Uber settled (that typically means their insurer settled) so there is no need for a civil lawsuit. That is efficiency of the system and how the system is supposed to work. In other words you only bring a suit against the insured if the insurer wrongfully denies your claim, here the insurer paid up, so there is no need for a civil suit by the estate of the deceased against Uber.

The criminal side of things is interesting...but for sake of argument lets say you were in an accident, further assume it was your fault, resulting in a fatality. Typically, unless there was a separate crime (e.g. DUI, drag racing, etc...) there will be no criminal charge, just a civil traffic ticket for the accident (in many jurisdictions there will be a specific charge/penalties for an accident resulting in a fatality, but that will still be a traffic ticket, meaning non-criminal).

I am curious if the "driver" received a traffic ticket for the accident, my guess is he did, I can't imagine the responding officer(s) not issuing a traffic ticket for an accident much less one resulting in a fatality. Interestingly these traffic tickets for accidents with fatalities do usually carry a potential penalties that include suspension of the drivers license, so I do think the law will need to catch up with reality in that regard because suspending the driver's DL doesn't seem to punish the right party in the case of a self-driving car, so perhaps these states that allow self-driving cars need to think about adopting traffic laws specific to self-driving cars and figure out who those tickets should go to and the proper punishment (obviously you can't suspend the DL of a self-driving car or a car company).

Re: Anthony Levandowski ordered to pay $179M to Google

#204
post #200

>"However, Levandowski personally filed today for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, stating that the presumptive $179M debt quite exceeds his assets, which he estimates at somewhere between $50M and $100M." Could someone with a legal background say what this means in practical terms? Stating you have assets worth "between $50M and $100M" while declaring bankruptcy obviously looks absurd on it's face but I'm guessing there's muc…

I don't get your question. He is asked to pay $179M, he "only" has between $50M and $100M, hence he is technically bankrupt.

There are provisions in some places as to what can be taken by bankruptcy. Then there are laws about what debts can be wiped out by bankruptcy. I suspect it’s a more general question, will he be broke after this with a crappy reputation and no money or will he be “broke” and live in a multimillion dollar castle with a support staff and get around in last year’s S-class rather than this year’s hotness?

Re: Anthony Levandowski ordered to pay $179M to Google

#205

It feels perverse that when Uber's stolen technology killed a pedestrian, nobody was held liable and in fact no charges were pressed and no civil lawsuits were filed. But the person who stole that technology was indicted and is getting financially destroyed.

>nobody was held liable and in fact no charges were pressed and no civil lawsuits were filed As noted below Uber settled (that typically means their insurer settled) so there is no need for a civil lawsuit. That is efficiency of the system and how the system is supposed to work. In other words you only bring a suit against the insured if the insurer wrongfully denies your claim, here the insurer paid up, so there is…

> obviously you can't suspend the DL of a self-driving car or a car company

Why not? This (suspending permission to operate on public roads) seems like a perfectly reasonable response to a self-driving car company being negligent.

Re: Anthony Levandowski ordered to pay $179M to Google

#206

It feels perverse that when Uber's stolen technology killed a pedestrian, nobody was held liable and in fact no charges were pressed and no civil lawsuits were filed. But the person who stole that technology was indicted and is getting financially destroyed.

>nobody was held liable and in fact no charges were pressed and no civil lawsuits were filed As noted below Uber settled (that typically means their insurer settled) so there is no need for a civil lawsuit. That is efficiency of the system and how the system is supposed to work. In other words you only bring a suit against the insured if the insurer wrongfully denies your claim, here the insurer paid up, so there is…

| obviously you can't suspend the DL of a self-driving car or a car company

Why not? They have to have some kind of license to operate, right? Even if it's not labelled "driver's license". If their vehicles are going around running people over, revoke whatever license it is that they have until they get it fixed.

Re: Anthony Levandowski ordered to pay $179M to Google

#207
post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but I'm sure some prosecutor took a look at it and decided it wasn't worthwhile. People get killed in accidents all the time, and frequently nobody gets charged with anything. A person being killed in a car accident while jaywalking at night because the driver wasn't paying attention particularly well is a story as old as cars, and usually doesn't result in jail time. Turns out, people are legally allowed to dr…

> Turns out, people are legally allowed to drive while being really shitty drivers The UK actually has a law against this, see "Causing Death by Careless or Inconsiderate Driving (Section 2B of the Road Traffic Act 1988, amended by the Road Safety Act 2006, s. 20)" here: http://www.brake.org.uk/news/15-facts-a-resources/facts/497-... It means you can be prosecuted for causing a death in a moment of inattention. It's…

If your momentary negligence can end life, might I suggest being very careful?

Re: Anthony Levandowski ordered to pay $179M to Google

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Primary residence in Florida is shielded from bankruptcy and creditors. Also retirement accounts (both IRAs and 401ks). Lease your expensive ride and you’re mostly judgement proof.

Now I'm wondering if people retire in Florida to avoid retirement accounts and residences from being reclaimed during bankruptcy. Sounds like a great recipe for scam artists, TBH.

People retire in Florida because it's warm and there's no state income tax to double dip on your investment or other income. Great creditor protections is a second order effect.

Re: Anthony Levandowski ordered to pay $179M to Google

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the driver was given an impossible task in order to save money for the company. They were required to both fill in information on a tablet and monitor the car. It's not even clear that monitoring a semi-self driving car is even possible. Constant vigilance for the 2% of edge cases where it might crash is harder than just driving. Uber had previously used two people to do this task but had switched to one pers…

Not taking sides here but want to point out one thing: When I took the Uber self driving cab in Pittsburgh (randomly called on my Uber), there were two people in the car. One person was a driver, and the other person was in the passenger seat with a laptop. They were both very polite. The person with the laptop was very focused and watched the sensors take in information. The driver -- at least in my case -- was very…

Yeah, but out of all the self-driving test miles Uber is doing, how many are in the self-driving cabs vs non-public road testing?

I would expect them to be very careful with a passenger in the car scrutinizing but much less so in a test car. If a high enough percentage of the millions of miles these companies are doing are tests without passengers, there could be a lot of road miles happening with a single overburdened driver that the public isn't seeing much of.

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