BuzzFeed News
Uber’s deputy general counsel Angela Padilla called a former employee’s letter alleging corporate espionage and other shady tactics “extortion” on the stand during a hearing today in the Waymo versus Uber trial.
But that former employee’s lawyer, Clayton Halunen, said Padilla’s testimony was “outrageous and could be defamatory.” He suggested it could even potentially violate the conditions of his client’s $7.5 million settlement with Uber, he told BuzzFeed News.
The letter in question, which was written by attorney for former Uber security analyst Ric Jacobs and sent to Uber back in May, blew up Waymo’s trade secrets case against Uber on Tuesday, just a week before the set trial date.
Waymo — the self-driving car division of Google’s parent company, Alphabet — sued Uber back in February, alleging that former Google engineer Anthony Levandowski stole documents and trade secrets that were acquired by Uber along with Levandowski’s self-driving truck startup Otto in August 2016. Jacobs’ letter alleges that Uber had teams whose purpose was finding competitor’s unguarded intellectual property online, that employees used encrypted and ephemeral chat apps to cover their tracks, and even that Uber’s corporate espionage specifically targeted Waymo.
After a state attorney general, who was also investigating Uber for another matter, alerted Judge William Alsup to the existence of this letter, Alsup — who appeared visibly annoyed in court — was forced to further delay the trial in order to allow Waymo sufficient time to investigate these new claims and additional evidence. The trial, which was supposed to begin next week, is now slated to begin in February.
"Poor Uber. I don’t feel sorry for you because you brought all this on yourself."
Alsup acknowledged that this delay would mean lawyers on both sides would be working through the holiday seasons. But the judge was unsympathetic. "Poor Uber,” he said during Wednesday’s hearing. “I don’t feel sorry for you because you brought all this on yourself."
Hoping to get to the bottom of why Uber withheld Jacobs’ letter from the court, even though the document explicitly alleged that Uber stole information from Waymo, Alsup ordered Padilla, as well as other Uber employees, to testify in court. During her Wednesday morning testimony, Padilla repeatedly denied the claims made in Jacobs’ letter, comparing it to any other letter from a disgruntled former employee.
“We see a lot of letters from unhappy employees, drivers, a lot are very fantastical and make all sorts of wild, crazy allegations that were never substantiated,” said Padilla. At other points during her testimony, Padilla said she only skimmed Jacobs’ letter, and noted for the court that she is overseeing at least 750 individual lawsuits against Uber.
But there is one significant way in which Jacobs’ is different from other disgruntled former employees — after making these allegations against Uber, the company paid Jacobs and his lawyer a total of $7.5 million. The money bought both an end to his claims, and his help as a consultant working to address the compliance and security issues he raised to Uber, both in his letter and elsewhere. Padilla said in court that Jacobs is helping law firm Wilmer Hale conduct another internal investigation at the embattled ride-hailing company.
Though Padilla and other Uber employees argued that Jacobs’ allegations were unsubstantiated, the large sum of money he was paid suggests they weren’t entirely baseless. "You said it was a fantastic B.S. letter, and there was no merit, and yet you paid $4.5 million,” said Alsup to Padilla in court on Wednesday. “People don’t pay that kind of money for B.S.… and they certainly don’t hire them as a consultant if they thought what they had to contribute was B.S."
In a call with BuzzFeed News, Halunen, said he takes most of his cases on contingency and usually takes 40% of any settlement or reward his clients obtain. He would not discuss the specifics of Jacobs’ claims against Uber, citing the settlement, and said he was no longer representing Jacobs at this time.
Lawyers for Waymo also noted that the number of high-level executives and Uber board members who reviewed Jacobs’ letter suggests that, despite what the company is arguing in court now, they took the missive, and its contents, seriously. Padilla admitted that former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick received an email containing similar allegations from Jacobs; board members who received copies of his May letter included Benchmark’s Bill Gurley, Arianna Huffington, Garrett Camp, Ryan Graves, David Bonderman, and Wan Ling Martello.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
from BuzzFeed - Tech https://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanmac/uber-attorney-calls-former-employees-allegations-of?utm_term=4ldqpia
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